Vikram's Anniyan ;-). Review on Vikram

ANNIYAN REVIEW:

Some people watch what happens. Some people wonder what happened. Only a few people make it happen. If you want to find one person having all three you must watch Anniyan. He who wants bad to go to hell, He who comes from hell is not afraid of hot ashes, he who loves flowers is intoxicated by love. Three extremist characters portrayed by one forms the base of Anniyan.

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose. Director Shankar’s previous venture Boys bombed at the box office. It was termed vulgar comedy. Oscar Ravichandran’s last two films in Jay Jay and Thendral were also tow bombings. Sada has not had a good run after Jayam. Vikram’s last release was a year and a half back in Arul. This also did not do too well at the box-office. Hence the recent floppers have come together to prove a point to the cine industry through this mega block buster Anniyan.

The hype generated for this movie has been tremendous. But hype can go both ways. We have seen tremendously hyped movies like Boys and Alavandan go into dumps because they never met the expectation of the people. They might have fared better had the build up been less. The same holds good for Anniyan too. The craze went a notch higher with the trailer proving to be high-class. But did the movie match the hype? Was it worth the money? Was the effort worth it?

The three most essential and central characters of the movie are Raamanujan, Remo and Anniyan. Three characters but just a single person. What does this mean? For people who had seen Chandramukhi, Deewangee, Primal Fear, Me myself and Irene, this is another movie on the same lines of Multiple Personality Disorder. But never the less, Vikram has excelled in his acting. He shows prowess in acting as Raamanujam, ruthlessness as Anniyan and happy-go-lucky kind model as Remo.

The first is Rules Ramanujam a person who always abides the rules. He is not just perfect by himself, but expects others to be perfect too. When he sees the haughty ill-disciplined nature of the people who ostracize law, he begins to brood within himself and transforms into Anniyan without his cognition. As he turns Anniyan, he gets the ruthless power and imperiously punishes people who he feels have dis-obeyed the code of law. The way he murders the wrong-doers is similar to the punishments given to crime-makers in hell. Sada the female lead, does not like Vikram as Ramanujam. While brooding within himself when Sada rejects Ramanujam, another personality in Remo, a model is generated. How he becomes a model? How his hair color turns brown? How he begins to drive a Ninja bike? How he gets the power when he turns into Anniyan? How his hair color turns back to black? Are questions best when avoided or best when they don’t come to your mind. Remo is a character added to bring more masala effect to the movie. A characterization that could have well been avoided. We would have missed two unwanted songs too with the exclusion of this character.

Vivek, as the buddy of the hero and a cop has excelled in his comedy. He is simply scintillating in most comedy sequences. Prakash Raj has done a decent job. He does not have a huge scope for acting though. Sada is ordinary. She does not create any wave. You just know she exists.

The movie’s bright and the only light is Vikram. The last half hour belongs just to him and nobody else. His efforts at acting are just amazing when it has paid of. Is Vikram getting into Kamal kind of genre by doing more roles having scope for acting?

Shankar’s screenplay gets into a tango with the introduction of the Remo character. It begins to jar from the moment this character comes on screen. As I said the lengthy 3 hour movie could have come down to a crisp 2 and quarter hour movie with the exclusion of Remo. But Shankar thought otherwise. Lets wait to see what public feels about this.

Though the stunt scenes were good, they began to cloy because of over-dosage of graphics. There were instances in the aka. Matrix fight, where it was very lucid that some difficulut fight sequences were not originally done by Vikram, but a body double was used. Shankar could have reduced the complexity of the fight scenes rather.

Harris Jeyaraj has done a good job. His songs were chart-busters even before the movie hit the screens. But the level has gone one step further because of the picturization of the songs. If you want to know how to colossally waste money, Shankar can be your best guide. For a simple acid loop song like “randaka” Shankar has painted the roads, stones, buses and lories for no reason. This was a totally unnecessary expenditure for the producer.

When Shankar as a producer makes shoe-string budget movies like Kadal and they become block busters, I think he should also cut down the cost of his movies made for other producers.

Overall Anniyan is a movie worth watching. But certainly not worth the hype generated.