By Naveen
You shall be turned out of my house and I will never have your name pronounced in my presence again. It is disgusting-degrading-disgraceful.
- Adolphus Longestaffe to his daughter Georgina in Anthony Trollope’s fine satire The Way we Live Now over her plans to marry a Jew
It never ceases to surprise me how Tamil Cinema “Stars” retain a faithful fan following despite unleashing hideous junk after junk.
A mystery that perhaps more intelligent species in the future may unravel.
Garbage Lovers, Ahoy
Ajith Kumar’s 50th movie Mankatha released today, a day ahead of a normal release.
The garbage loving Tamil audience thronged Big Cinemas near Chicago in surprisingly large numbers.
Ajith’s fan following is impressive.
The 7 pm and 7:30 pm shows were sold out. The number of shows was increased from 2 to 4 today and when my show ended I saw a long line for the next show. Hey, the adjacent Ebony Lounge even threw a dinner buffet after seeing the crowd.
Well, never underestimate the diehard garbage-loving Tamil movie fan’s penchant to embrace trash with gusto.
Cast: “Thala” Ajith Kumar, “Action King” Arjun, Trisha, Premji Amaran, Lakshmi Rai, Vaibhav, Anjali, Andrea, matrum palar (and Others)
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Direction: Venkat Prabhu
Producers: Dayanidhi Alagiri (Cloud Nine Movies)
Story Sinopsis
Vinayak Mahadevan (Ajith) is a dirty cop and under suspension for bumping off a fellow cop and abetting the escape of a smuggler. The smuggler, Faizal works for Arumuga Chettiyar, a bigger smuggler.
Chettiar’s daughter Sanjana (Trisha) is in love with Vinayak which he pretends to reciprocate.
Prithviraj (Arjun) is another cop who leads a special branch to investigate and eradicate betting against the backdrop of the IPL Cricket tournament.
A lot of money under Chettiar’s supervision is about to exchange hands. Vinayak plans to loot that money.
Chettiar’s henchman Sumant (Vaibhav) and his friends (a local Sub Inspector, a bar owner and the bar owner’s friend, Prem – Premji Amaran) also plan to loot that money. Vinayak discovers their plan and drops into the gang as the leader.
They loot Rs 500 Crores stashed in a godown secured by a Navtal pootu (an old fashioned lock popular in India) that is digitally secured by Prem the hacker.
What follows is a sloppy cat and mouse game between Vinayak, the gang, Chettiar’s henchmen led by Faizal, and Prithviraj with several predictable twists and monotonous turns that end in a dramatically stale climax.
Shoddy Screenplay
The movie is touted as an action thriller but director Venkat Prabhu is clueless in handling that genre.
He messes it up one scene at a time until he successfully botches it completely.
Given his penchant for stealing, Prabhu generously borrows ideas from several Hollywood movies but proves utterly incapable of even getting inspired properly.
The Mankatha story flow is jerky and the movie unevenly paced.
First half is filled with amateurish comedy evoking no more than a mild chuckle once in a while and plethora of irritating songs that pop up for no reason.
The movie picks up some pace in the second half although it’s hampered periodically due to Venkat Prabhu’s inability to move the plot to the next scene.
None of the songs are worthy of a second hearing and most were intolerably cruel on the ears even on first hearing.
Yuvan Shankar Raja is surely walking his talented father to an early grave with such mind-numbing and uncreative music.
Miserable Performances
The self-styled Ultimate Star Ajith Kumar has ‘acted’ in 49 movies before this!
It’s a miracle how the audience has endured and survived that many movies from this buffoon.
One would think that with age and experience would come some improvement but, alas, not for our TharuThala.
Bad as ever, Ajith’s acting is devoid of expressions and ability of any kind. Continue reading »
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