Old Wine in a new bottle

After seeing ‘Anniyan’ on Saturday one will think, why even suspect whether Shankar - India’s costliest director - is running out of steam. One of the major minus point in this movie is that audiences are able to predict the story as well as Shankar’s formula. Ok, what is Shankar’s formula??? Being a student of S A Chandrasekar, Shankar always tries to convey some message to the society, delve the problems in our Indian law, hero taking the law in his hands, good technical crew, punish the baddies, super hit songs, one folk song (Generally this song will have very high use of percussion instruments and he intentionally uses a fast beat song to give some respite to the people before taking them to climax. Some example are ‘Ottagatha Kattiko’ in ‘Gentleman’, ‘Gopala Gopala’ in ‘Kaadalan’, ‘Uppu Karuvaadu’ in ‘Mudhalvan’, ‘Kannodu Kaanpedelam’ in ‘Jeans’) in the last 30 min of the movie. Whether he missed any one of above items in this movie? Answer is no. This movie even has a folk song ‘Rendakka Rendakka’ in the last 30 min. I am not against formula film making. Two most successful actors in Tamil cinema are MGR and Rajini. They both believed in formula films. But they always substituted different values in their formula. They will have 5 songs with different tunes, 5 comedy scenes with different flavor, Stunts with numerous styles and different heroic subject as their story. This is where Shankar missed the trick to some extent. He almost substituted the same values what he used for ‘Indian’ and ‘Gentleman’. Another major minus point is songs - which are Shankar’s forte - are not good when you compare it with his previous films and BGM is not up to the mark. Definitely Shankar missed A R Rahman a lot.

I won’t explain the story, in detail, as it will spoil the thrill and curiosity of the readers who are yet to see this film. In short, it’s about a person - whose pretty sister was electrocuted because of the carelessness of the EB department - who is perfect in all aspects of life and also expects the same from others. If he comes across any kind of crime in the society, he will handle that using law and tries to bring a solution which many time seems to be impractical and is criticizes by all, including his lover. Without his conscious, he starts to punish the criminals and director has tried to justify this using a new disease, Multi Personality Disorder. He also woos his ladylove with a different personality. Hero uses different ways, which has been explained in ‘Garuda Puranam’ to punish the culprits. This part is really interesting and is one of the pros of this film. Problem is that after many movies like ‘Ramana’ this story seems to have become obsolete.

Vikram’s overall performance is very good. But still I feel he, as Ramanujam alias Ambi, is not convincing as a strait laced Brahmin and his strong muscular iron like body doesn’t help him either. I am yet to see a Brahmin who has that kind of body. Generally Brahmins will have a flabby body and his dialog delivery is not that much great when you compare it with Kamal’s in MMKR or Maadavan’s in Nala Damayanthy. As Remo, he is really excellent and this character is mainly inserted only for songs. He is perfectly suited in Anniyan character. His acting in last 30 min or so is the main highlight of the film and he received a well-deserved applause from the audiences. He has done a remarkable job in stunt sequence too. Thanks to some special effect. I think director is a great fan of WWE. You can clearly see some shades of the famous ‘Undertaker’ in Anniyan’s attire. They could have used a different voice modulation for the third character as it reminds me of Kamal’s character as ‘Senapathy’ in Indian.

What to say about today’s heroines? Sada is no different from others. Sada is ‘Saada’ in most of the part - this is the statement I saw in one of the Mouthshut.com’s review and that reviewer has hit the nail on the head. She too didn’t depict the Brahmin character well.

Supporting characters did there job very well. Nedumuni Venu as Ramanujam’s father, Ramesh Vaidya as heroin’s father and ‘MettiOli’ fame Shanti Williams as hero’s mother did their job well. Two main characters that excelled in their performance are Vivek as ‘Chary’ and Prakash Raj. Vivek is the one who kept the first half moving and Prakash Raj in climax did a fantastic job.

Music is a big let down in this movie. Songs are neither peppy nor classical and it is saved only by some rich picturization. Best song in that album is Remo song and even it has some influence of the BeeGees song ‘Tragedy’ (that is when the chorus chant R E M O Remo Remo) in it. BGM is very mediocre and in some places BGM has same feel as that of Indian like the one when Prakash Raj’s brother is killed in a merciless way has some influence from Indian, when Corporation officer was killed by Senapathy in the storeroom. In other place it is little bit loud and jarring.

Technicality is one of the major plus in the movie. Sabu Cyril’s Art and Ravi Varman‘s Camera work (His first movie should have been ‘Marudhunayagan’ and he is a student of Ravi K Chandran. Initially Mani Kandan did the camera work. After he left in the mid way, Ravi got that chance) are really good and Sujatha’s dialogues are good in patches. Stunts by Peter Hein are of Hollywood standard.

Direction is good. At the same time Shankar has to understand that story is the nucleus of any movie and it should not be predictable. It is always better to go for a new story and even if he wants to rehash his story he can do that only after some time with different treatment. Otherwise movie won’t be that much successful. Also he should not depend too much on special effects as they will get saturated at one point and also those special effects are available to everyone and everyone can achieve what Shankar can achieve.

Pros: Last 30 minutes. Good work by Vikram and superb stunts with good camera work. Dialogues are decent and have some humor in some places. Vivek and Prakash Raj’s acting skill really helped the movie a lot. MPD and ‘Garuda Puranam’ kindled the audience’s curiosity. Also the Tulip flowers in Amsterdam in Netherlands.

Cons: Story is very old and has lot of logical holes. Music and Dialogues in some places are not upto the mark. Somewhat resemble Chandramukhi which has been released just before two months.

Final say: This Anniyan is not Anniyan (Stranger) to us. It has all the safe elements but doesn’t have the special elements which we expect from Shankar. This is nothing but an extension of Indian. We don’t know the result of this movie. This may become hit as we have seen in the past that some of Deva’s song topping the charts even though they are either copied from other MDs or rehashed from his old songs.