Vijay, The Actor...in...The Hunter -- Vettaikaran HMPH!

Vettaikaran Movie review (Only Vijay)

The first movie I ever saw in my LIFE was Vettaikaran. Fascinated, I was four or five when I watched a stealthy MGR circling a wounded lion in the jungle and somehow, instead of claiming his beast, he removes the thorn sticking out of the animal's paw and relieves the lion of its pain. How KIND! I was a goner...for MGR! He was a true hero in my young eyes. (Things change...okay?)

So, I went to today's Vettaikaran movie starring Vijay ('Ilayathalapathy') with faraway thoughts and 'panging' nostalgia.

But...

V for VERY predictable is V for Vijay.

The movie began ...interestingly not with Vijay beating up somebody, but with a very Telugu-mouthed Telugu actor (You know how 'Telugu or Hindi mouths' speak Tamil on screen right? Bit of a money-purse look on their mouths) shooting some bad guy. This Telugu-mouth is a cop and a wonderful, upright, righteous, aggressive encounter specialist at that.

Vijay's intro in the film was...on a horse. For a moment, I was stunned -- were Devar Films back in action? Then, I thought it must have to do with hunting. Vettaikaran and all that. Kings may have hunted on horses, but this looked ridiculous! Anyway, some silly Vijay fightings and savings-of-the-day later, the hero launched into some predictable song. As usual, nepotism puts me off so when Vijay's son (I think it's his son) joins him on screen for the song, it simply...irks. Sidey touch. But perhaps not for the proud papa or a die-hard Vijay fan. Hmph.

After the song and dance about nothing, hero has usual scoldy parents with some terribly boring family humour and leaves for Chennai to become a policeman no less, and to be like Telugu-Mouth mentioned above. Soon he predictably sees the love of his life and proceeds with some over-acting jollu and associated emotions and expressions.

Anyway, the romance picture in Vijay's movies is all about girls who wear less and dance more. This one -- Anushka (weird name) is from Tollywood (hate these tags), is nice-looking and (read 'BUT') is TALL. Anyway you look at it, Tamil cnema ain't the place for her unless far-fetchedly, Tamil movie viewing moves to taller heroines with much-shorter heroes who save them from various artificial elements. Heck, even in supposedly far-ahead Hollywood this has not happened. So, sigh, but bye-bye Anushka even though we DO appreciate the correct Tamil mouthing of dialogues. Really, we do. It's just that Kamal, Surya, Vikram and company cannot bear to look up to you. Am not being mean, it's true. Besides I LIKE Kamal, Vikram and Suriya. Vijay just about managed cos he is taller than the others.

One new angle here is the girl-friend he has (er, no, not Anushka. Apparently *yuck*, she is his 'angel' *Barf*). Platonic and nice relationship and in fact SHE is the one he saves from the bad guys as a GOOD friend-bordering-on-brother...whatever. (am losing interest in this post already! So YOU are excused)

The songs by Vijay Antony are ...enjoyable. I am very very Tamil, and very very happy-to-be, so that's my excuse for liking the songs. The song 'Karikalai''s female playback singer is great and some 'suuuur', 'burr' and 'gurrr' sounds you hear in another song are in fact abbreviated lyrics! Please leave your brains out of this. The song 'Chinna Thamarai' is indeed nice and interesting, with some rap thrown in most incongruously but ...hmmm, quite interestingly. Besides, Vijay startles you with a strong Michael Jackson flavour in this song and looks strangely suddenly-chubby-faced as well! The badly placed wig distracted.

But this is a Vijay film -- so expect to expect strange things...

Dream sequences galore with the strong possibility that the audience may forget to wake up when it is over.

Then the Avengorama story: quickly (!), is that a wannabe cop with inspiration Telugu Mouth comes to Chennai, gets entangled with bad guys and nearly pays dearly for it. Telugu Mouth is actually a badly shattered and blinded encounter supercop who hates life these days. Then hero manages to gain 1,2,3...up on the villain (oh, VERY nice Tamil speaking by Salim Ghouse btw) and his son Chella played by some new, apparently Telugu actor who btw, I have seen work out in my gym and looks every bit the villain he portrays. Hope that look is on purpose! Back to story, the hero loses his best friend who's killed by Salim Ghouse (certainly due to hero's own carelessness, sorry) and avenges this by killing 'Chella'. Salim Ghouse then avenges this by becoming a minister and Vijay then avenges that by ...some twists and turns and Salim's character ends up with a bullet in his pancreas, no less. The bullet might have got his spleen too!

What is Tamil cinema's obsession to have endearing words either spoken by the villain as a refrain or have an endearment as a name for the villain?GRR. And why does this villain seem to say in challenge to Vijay: 'Waada.........WAAAAA!' when in Tamil, it should be 'Vaada.....Vaaaaa!'

Telugu purse-mouth syndrome.

Note: I have absolutely nothing against Telugus but much against Telugu actors badly-mouthing Tamil dialogues in Tamil films, dammit.

Vettaikaran -- The Hunted look in the audience's eyes was indeed caused by this hunter!

His next film should be titled (yes, yes, the big 50th film *snort*) 'YAVM' -- standing for Yet Another Vijay Movie. But then, I suppose I will be watching it after all. Need to be well out of reach of reality sometimes y'know, with some mindless but indeed good dancing thrown in, some gala songs and much masala in the otherwise bland curd rice.

Oh and the script can be by ANYone by the way, as long as it has a generous amount of nonsense and high levels of corniness.