Movie Review – Leo

An actor in fine form and a director who believes in his craft, sell this mediocre film, thanks to the sincerity.

Thanks to a lot of backlash, it took me a while to watch the film. For the hype it generated before it, I too, like many of you, wanted the film to fail. But it was surprisingly cool. Good that I already got to know about the fake flashback and boring second half. I was prepared for a snooze fest. But I was happy how Lokesh made an ambitious project, within his limits, in a blockbuster format movie. Lokesh and now Nelson, even though are lifting the standards of blockbuster genre with their way of handling cinema, it’s sad to see that they are inspiring a bunch of youngsters in just making a good film as a road to a big star’s project.

The film starts with an amazing Sandy and his gang stealing a house. Their whole part was done superbly and left to surprise as what they’re capable with, may be in some other film of LCU. Of course the looks and the way Sandy behaved was a template psycho character, yet it still worked. In fact the whole first half worked like a charm. It’s lovely to see how Lokesh is making a genre of his own, with this fake identity thing. He makes the story with a lot more respect than other masala filmmakers do.

The much coveted Hyena sequence happens next. It’s a reasonably well choreographed sequence. But don’t know why Vijay never gets his wig right. VFX was top notch. There are bound to be comparisons with the grizzly bear sequence of ‘The Revenant’ (a film and a sequence which I didn’t like) but it’s understandable that they couldn’t go to the level of that, with the limited expertise and budget available. Overall the sequence was a fair deal and how it acted as a setup for many things in the movie, about Parthi’s (Vijay) affinity towards animals, Joshy’s (Gautham Vasudev Menon) shooting skills, Siddhu’s (Mathew Thomas) javelin skills etc. Only because of that scene, in the second half when Siddhu throws the Javelin at Parthi, it was that powerful, otherwise it would have been bland like Andrea with the bow and arrow in Master. Also loved the suddenness of the title card post. It was short and sweet.

Vijay was at his charming best. I’m afraid I’m becoming a fan of him. I hate to confess but he’s aging like a fine wine. In this film as a father of two kids, his chemistry with them were amazing. Especially the “Karu Karu Karupayi” sequence, he absolutely owned it. Both Trisha and her character was dull and boring and there was absolutely no chemistry between the two of them, which was sad to see. It’s really difficult to be a woman testosterone filled Lokiverse. The only kind of women which would appeal in his films would be like that of Agent Tina (Vasanthi).

The highlight of the film would definitely be the fight sequences, whether or not it was clinical, whether or not it worked for you, each one was taken with so much effort and sincerity, every fight had a theme. It was like watching Shankar film’s song. Even though by now it had become redundant, he was the first person who invested (not just the money) on songs. But hopefully this concept doesn’t get beaten to death and become an excuse for bad writing.

By the time, the glass breaks and we hear the “Badass”, Lokesh almost sells the film, with the help of terrific Vijay. Anything and everything which happens in the film post that (except for that click of a tongue to call Subramani) is him trying to have a conclusive end to the film. The flashback was a disaster, especially as soon as Elisa Das (Madonna Sebastian) appears in the film. How are we supposed to sympathize for a character we had just seen? And Leo escaping the place too wasn’t convincing.

It’s followed by few high octane sequences and one sudden breakdown of Parthi in front of his wife. In cricket, you can say how well a batsman is in form, by the sound of ball striking the willow. That scene felt like it. Vijay doesn’t do that type of sequence anymore. There he doesn’t cheat only his wife but us too. Such terrific acting. The character reveal in the end was just ‘meh’ but how Lokesh has cleverly found out what works for Vijay and what doesn’t is shown in the end by his supposed comic take in the dinner table and his hesitancy in picking the call in the climax. A similar sequence would be there in ‘Master’ where he’d with his students and climb the stairs saying, “apdi enatha than da pesitu irupanga”. Its minute things like these which Lokesh has extracted from Vijay, which makes the film nice.

I hate to believe that he’s adding songs just for the market. I guess he too enjoys it. It was okay for “Pathala Pathala”, even though unnecessary, everyone were happy to see Andavar having his due of fun but “Naan Ready” was totally unnecessary and cringe. I don’t want to read too much into his idea of drug free society and LCU. It just feels like the message in ‘Thulluvadho Ilamai’, where they show everything and ask them not to do.

Movie Review – K.G.F: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2

Noise or Music?

‘KGF’ is a problematic film. I watched the first part in TV with not so much concentration and the film’s trajectory swings here and there like mood swings of an irritable person. I couldn’t completely enjoy it like a guilty pleasure as well as couldn’t completely set it aside as a not-my-type-of film. It was here and there and that was the biggest problem. I saw myself applauding for few scenes and hating some. Both were in fact okay but together it didn’t piece together and ends up as a film too long trying to express what it was trying to express. That’s my I waited and watched the first part again before watching the second part to come to a conclusion…

We’re in good days that each film industry has given a big blockbuster extravaganza. It’s not by luck it has become so but it was written so and marketed that way as well. So comparisons were bound to happen with ‘Bahubali’ 1 and 2. That’s where the problem lies, ‘KGF’ couldn’t cope up with it, but the director Prashanth Neel would have written the film before the release of Bahubali or may be in parallel with it. So even though it has similar sentiments like being a people’s champion, mother sentiment, respecting women etc. ‘KGF’ progresses in its own way.

The film was an out and out Rocky (Yash) show and other characters, both positive and negative were just commentators enhancing his macho image. The confusing thing here was, watching it dubbed in Tamil, it was working for large extent, and I was constantly confused how and why it was working. Of course, many dialogues by now have taken a comic template or in memes but it’s more so because it impacted for that sentiment in the movie. Wish I could have just enjoyed and not be confused or just hated it. The confusion part was confusing me, just like the screenplay of the movie.

The film was told through Anand Ingalagi (Anant Nag) in part one and son of him, Vijayendra Ingalagi (Prakash Raj) in part two. Both, film’s narrative wise as well as narrators’ wise, Part 2 was much better as it was clear. In Part one, scenes appear out of blue, that was contributed to Anand’s old age. Wish those scenes has a clearer explanation in part two but that wasn’t to happen. Wonder whether it should be appreciated as director’s cleverness or a cheap trick. Ther was no dearth of built up so to infuse scenes which didn’t fit to the screenplay was not really necessary. Anand overdoes in the first part. It was as if Prashanth had shot those scenes and didn’t find the right tool to place it in the film, so he fitted it somehow.

The films biggest problem and the most irritating character was Reena Desai (Srinidhi Shetty) who was given western dress in part one and traditional dress in part two and that was it. There was nothing interesting about her characterization otherwise. It was a movie which had caricatures as characters, so why not resort to make it an entirely guy movie. Rocky was having a hard time in song sequences; he was too macho even for an item number where he was not expected to express any love emotion. So, needless to say, the love track was just debacle. Reena not only looks confused about her emotion but makes us confused too as to what her character was trying to prove.

The mother sentiment, in short, works but again it comes out at needless times and spoils the flow of the film and changes the mood of the film suddenly. It was like two different films yet works for some weird reason. Wish it had been a complete guilty pleasure like an ‘Expendables’ or a ‘Death Race’ with men and machismo but it tries to do a sentiment film in the midst of that and tries to infuse values sometime and leaves our audience dazed and confused.

Even with respect to the titular character, ‘Rocky’ it was not clear whether why he was getting so much love. He was the same man who lets a couple of slaves being killed Garuda (Ramachandra Raju) which I found no logic to, apart from giving a cinematic high for climax. He who doesn’t feel bad initially about slaves being killed suddenly gets angry for a blind man about to be killed. The reason? Not sure. So, his love towards him and people’s love towards him were both problematic and confusing. I guess it’s a film which couldn’t be analyzed. Like how no one can say why they like certain people, how certain actors become famous, ‘KGF’ should be left alone.