Sunday, June 17, 2007

Sivaji - The Buss*

Coming straight to the point, the movie was good. It was definitely not horrible. But, it was nowhere close to being great. Unfortunately, that is the minimum standard one expects from a Rajni flick. So, for all the hype that was created and for all the big names that the movie was made up of, Sivaji was more buss than Boss.

There were many things that I didnt like in the movie to varying degrees.

a.) Stalking - I hate movies that glorify stalking. This was a big turn off for me. The fact that every movie has its share of stalking is no justification. They are all wrong too and so is this (I still remember absolutely hating 7G rainbow colony while it seemed the whole world liked it). Stereotypical of stalking, the heroine falls for the hero after he spends significant time and money on stalking her. That was just too ridiculous for me to accept. To me, any possibility for this movie to have been great was dashed straight away.

b.) Comedy / seriousness mix - One major attraction in Rajni movies is the supposed power he wields and his dominance over his adversaries. Mixing comedy with such scenes is pretty stupid and robs the Rajni movie of the element that makes them the Rajni movie. For e.g., the scene were Rajni moves the villains documents in and out of the income tax office.

c.) Dance - Please Rajni, please. Please do not attempt to dance any more. While Shriya/Nayantara (Nayantara was surprisingly slim. Took a few seconds to recognize her) were elegance personified in their movements, Rajni had his foot rooted to the ground and made some ridiculous movements of his other body parts. It was horrible.

d.) Shriyas cleavage - For some reason, Sankar decided to have Shriyas cleavage displayed in almost every other scene she was there. Its nice and hot a few times but felt it was a bit of a overkill. The human anatomy is public knowledge and everyone knows how every part of her body will look like. Also, with skinflicks being the norm these days, these things are just a distraction for a Rajni movie.

e.) Too artificial settings - For some reason, I found the song backgrounds to be too artificial. I almost felt that the mountain and the grass were painted. I think this totally screwed the 'Ballelaika' song. I had great expectations for it after hearing to the audio.

f.) Contrived fight sequences - Some fight scenes were very contrived and I seriously got bored.

g.) Stupid ideas - Ideas like... 'ippudi irukura unga ooru, ippudi aayidum'.. & 'tamil nadum america'... are just downright stupid. Pouring tonnes of asphalt and concrete on our surroundings does not imply 'growth and development'. They also come with a tremendous environmental cost. Its not enough just for us to live happily here. Our sons/daughters, grandsons/granddaughters etc... should also be able to live reasonably here. While, I appreciate the intention of the director, I dont quite agree on his notion of development (which incidentally is the notion of a vast majority of people).

h.) Dumbed down finances - Mr. Shankar - you are no P.Chidambaram. Don't dumb down things in order to make it palatable to the masses. Black money is not as simple as you say and a plan displayed over the course of a few frames during the credits at the end is not gonna work in a country with a population more than 1 billion. Still, the desire of the director could be noted and appreciated.

While, the above list seems long enough to call the movie a junk, thats definitely NOT the case. There are quite a few nice things also. The Rajni charisma and persona saved the day in the second half while the Vivek one liners were amazing in the first half. Shriya was HOTTTTTTT. Some of the dialogues were pretty good. For e.g., 'Panni thaan da kootama varum, Singam thaniya thaan varum' was awesome. The delivery was also amazing. Imitation of many past/present co-artists was also pretty good. 'Billa Ranga Basha thaan' songs' visual sequences were pretty nice. Lastly, I especially liked the last fight sequence. Yes, it was a copy of Matrix but it was not a cheap imitation. Rajni could impose his persona and style on it and was able to pull it off in style. It was quite elegant and nice to watch.

Guess, the idea of taking the middle path between a Shankar movie and a Rajni movie backfired a little. It was like going to a very costly restaurant where out of fear that absolutely nothing should go wrong, the chef cooks it in a fashion that leaves you wondering why it doesnt taste as good as some way more cheaper restaurant even though almost everything in the food seem right.

Overall, it was good but not great.

* Idea from KG. (not from his post but obtained while talking to him)

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Good so we pretty much felt the same way about the movie :)

Partha said...

hehe.. true.. true...

Jeevita said...

enakku pidichidu pa..
btw which show did you go? We went 3:30pm Sat.

Anonymous said...

For e.g., 'Panni thaan da kootama varum, Singam thaniya thaan varum' was awesome. The delivery was also amazing.

This dialog was already there in "Giri" movie.

Looks like 'The Boss' is combination of "Shankar's movies" and its not bad (coz of Thalaivar) and not good. - Nirmal

Saravanan Mathialagan said...

dae partha ..

seems even the worst film critic wouldnt have felt so bad abt the movie .. :-) .. as of me I jst streached my legs, came satisfied forgetting any logics. If you see some of the poular sequels like oceans 11, 12 and 13.. sivaji made better logic to me .. seriously 11 heros would rob a casino, and all there plans would go smoothly without any hinderance .. in oceans 13 they would have shown a earth quake generating machine .. hehe .. beleive me ..

film is definitely not great but liked lots of bits and pieces .. yeah flight scenes are totally unnecessary ..

seems they used lots of cameras and skin grafting technology in the song "athiradee" and "style" for showing rajini little fairer ..

like the concept "pooere get poorer" and rich get richer .. its very blatant.. that too in india, the money distribution is centralized and distributed fairly ..

and the development shown on the village .. yeah seems the director is ignorant of the environmental cost .. like many .. like question comes why so many buildings in villages .. :-)

and in the last scene, even one rupee you cant take with you, was a good punch to end the movie ..

for me i saw lots of good things from the movie .. just relaxed.. paisa vasool .. :-) ..

Partha said...

@ Jeevitha.. aah.. missed you again.. went to the plaza theatre to the same show, same day... :(

@ Puli / Nirmal - Welcome to my blog :).. thx for pointing out the case with the dialogue.. still, thalaivars delivery was awesome :D

@Sarav - I think we both feel the same about the movie.. There was lot of crap and lot of good things too... Rajni movies rarely if ever have logic.. so thats not was missing.. I too liked a lot of phases of the movie.. especially the last fight scene and as you point out.. the last statement... 'you cant even take back 1 rupee'...

Narasim said...

Have been following some of the past posts and in general have not posted a comment since I donot agree with what you have to say. But today I decided to drop in a few words....

The last posts have shown so much disdain towards the "rich" and the money that they take back home. Plus there was post which said, if a person has 10K indian rupees in his account then he is rich. Then there was the energy conservation drive...

I fail to understand how a person who so unequivocally argued against rich taking home so much money, patronizes a movie made at a record cost, involving so much consumption of energy.

Add to it the frenzy over the movie itself. There were the reported "paal abhishekams" which could have fed quite a few poor children.

While I do concede that the movie would have been made the way it was irrespective of one person patronized it or not, I would say by watching it you also endorse it.

I still donot have anything against the movie or people who watch it. I myself watch movies whenever I want to. But I just wanted to point out, what I felt was not in line with your own thoughts and probably goals.

Partha said...

@Narasim - Guess this needs a post as a reply.. will do it for sure.. but might take upto a week...

Karthik said...

@Narasim,

If we started counting the tiniest amounts of hypocrisy that we find in each other, none of us would ever be able to make a point. We are a bundle of contradictions. Absolute consistency is unattainable. Each individual can achieve certain levels of consistency depending on their awareness, priorities and other constraints. And, nobody should preach others about what constraints they should take in along their path. To each, his own.

I am reminded of a verse in the Bible which asks you to attend to the big stone in your eye before pointing out the speck of dirt in your neighbor's eye. Don't take it personally. Its a pretty common human characteristic to be like that.

To me, this is just a classic example of an armchair critic questioning the methods of a *doer*. As Morpheus says in the MATRIX, there is a big difference between knowing the path and walking the path. You don't know until you walk. You really don't.

Narasim said...

I do agree that each one of us is a bundle of contradiction. I know that I am quite inconsistent when it comes to taking sides and I sometimes end up surprising myself. -:)

But having known Partha for so long, I felt it was fair to point this out.

Moreover, as I said in my earlier comment, I have nothing against movies or for that matter fat pay packets.