Why would I review a Tamil movie to an audience that’s largely international? To show you the horrors depths to which Indian Cinema can go. It is a well known fact that creative juice among most indian filmmakers starts running 5 days after a Hollywood movie is termed blockbuster. After that in 7 different languages, you will find our own Indian versions of Batman, Spiderman and even the Incredible hulk. Why would I choose to write about this after a long hiatus? That I don’t know the answer to except I am so excited to spew my thoughts.

This review is about a remake of a director’s first movie that had a solid script (Anniyan) but was reworked with a Love Sex Magic (copyright Justin Timberlake/Ciara) formula. This director is Shankar. A guy I had respect for till today.Why do people think such shit works? I don’t know, I ended up paying 150 bucks to watch this shit. I wonder how many other fools like me left the theatre shaking their heads. Anyway on to the movie.

It was the most confounded money sucking totally worthless script-less shit.

Sorry that’s not the real review here it goes. There are spoilers ahead (if it’s possible to spoil a movie further just by writing it, I sincerely beg your pardon).

The story is that of a Rooster guy. This is a term I prefer to use rather than cock. Because that brings vivid images that a decent blog should not visit. Kanthaswamy (pronounced as Cun-Thaa Saa-Mee) is a rooster dressed superhero who can give batman a run for his costume (not.). He lives apparently in the heart of Chennai and frequently visits Mexico to romance his girlfriend (more about that later), but is the modern day over dressed Robin Hood that apparently can sift through 500,000 notes to pick up ones that he wishes to save. This is enabled by the worst parallel drawn to Bruce Wayne and other super heros. His unoriginal day time “name” is the same as the Cock he potrays – Kanthaswamy. The difference is he being in a hi tech – movie – only- outfit of the CBI (have you seen the real offices? I have and nothing was so cool) where he has audio and video surveillance in his office and fights good with a badge that gives him authority to do so. Some poor north indian guy plays his chief mentor and his tamil is worse than mine.

This then involves a plot that supposedly requires Vikram (another guy I lost respect for today) to cross dress and do unwanted stunts with an even more unwanted cock dance. Added to this horror is the task of enduring Vadivelu (A guy who still has my respect) shaking his booty while being watered. I’m sure his comedy is something that we can look forward to, not his ass. And definitely not watching him semi naked. Prabhu’s got the usual role most over the hill actors have, that of some cop trying to move his weight around the crowd to get information and getting the Ah-hah moment at the end of the movie.

I thought Mithun’s speeches in Luck was bad. Man oh man, wait till you see Vikrams “Save the Nation” dialogue at the end of the bus ride (which btw has a super addictive song which you must watch here). He gives this speech half to the crowd in front of him and half to the naked babe (Mumaith Khan yum) and the half naked businessman (whose name is insignificant here thus not reproduced).

All this does not bring us to the real reason why you should watch this movie, if at all. Shriya Saran. And since a picture speak a thousand words.

I know you don’t have to thank me. I enjoyed her attire in the movie as well as her infrequent appearances. All taken from google and copyrighted to the original people, I just patched them together. She has no role except that of a doll made to love some self righteous, row boating, no talking CBI officer. She has some terrible songs to dance to, but boy does she dance. If there’s one that that this movie does right it’s getting her to gyrate.  Most of the movie has her in a terrible plot wherein she tries to woo the hero into falling for her but is later fooled into thinking that actually happened. There is only so much a cross dressing CBI officer can fall for and a hot babe that can gyrate is not in the agenda. I think the director wanted to put this as a cock tease to show the intricacies of the plot. My name is Kanthaswamy. RAWR.

My question is don’t these filmmakers and actors watch their own movie? Or was it the annoying 3 hour lapse (which btw in a bad movie is never effing ending) that prevented them from the task of re-editing the movie. What do you edit though when the script itself is that taken out of a 4 year old’s imagination? Not barring the item numbers, most 4 year olds are already way in it before you were ever. Why do you torture the indian audience (any audience for that matter) to such trivial meaningless bullshit. This is like a photoshop project gone bad, you take 10 pictures with no co-relation whatsoever and put them together because some producer has a lot of money to shell out and the actors picked Mexico as the outlet to spend money. Vikrams acting is sub par in this movie, but then again I don’t know if it’s the script and anyone else in this role would have failed just as badly. Maybe not Vijay, since most of his movies are like this anyway. If you must see Shriya and a stoned up hero with a terrible cock dance as his routine before taking out the baddies.. you must STILL NOT watch this movie. You have been warned.

It’s not every movie that makes me jump on to the blog and write out my thoughts. But I would blame that on my mood and something that hasn’t happened before. The lax-ing of the Censor board in India. But more on to that later.

Watchmen is a movie directed by Zack Sydner. You would remember him from the wonderful movie 300, where the visuals were mind blowing, the script tight and the flow great. He kept the visuals part of that equation intact and floundered miserably on the the other two. This is based on a comic book and you know how seriously I take such movies where the rendering of the movie/character/hero has to bear some sort of resembalance to the whole thing right? Right.

The story starts about an ex-superhero being killed and a murder investigation then starts by a current hero. This current hero is the coolest character in the movie and goes by the name Rorschach. He is convinced that there is a larger plot, but how large is revealed as the movie goes on. This is a complicated intrinsic plot from the looks of it and many events occur together which are loosely pieced in the end.

So how was the movie?
In one word : disappointing. There were many useless scenes and the only reason I would give it credit is allowing full frontal nudity in Indian theatres. Apparently sex on the Indian screens is not really taboo. But that’s not the point. The point is this movie was patched together for lack of a strong story line. I haven’t read the watchmen comics but I know from what I have heard (from my friends and in particular Arvind and Tvac) that it holds a lot more depth and is hailed as one of the best “books” written. Not just a comic, but a book. Why would they want to screw it up in a movie? Largely because of the lack of being able to convey emotions that are abound in books and art. You cannot really express many things that you could in a book in a movie. And this is where the attempt failed. Scenes where miss.jupiter and nightowl fight and save some people from a burning house showed that they were as good a team so they had to do it to celebrate. Epic Fail.

It is important to understand that this concept of Watchmen was brought at a time when the readers in the 80’s and 90’s thought about a new understanding of the concept of a “super hero”. The understanding is that they use them and these superheros work together to prevent nuclear war destruction which was a large threat between Russia and the USA. The super heros start to question their roles in the whole equation and start to develop their character. There is a God in it who goes by Dr.Manhattan who has so many powers endowed and cannot age or die and can see into the future. How does he deal with it? What about the roles played by lesser godly heros who give into the dark temptations of man (Greed, Power and Lust). These are concepts that were explored and brings about a concept that is largely on the minds of people. Are Superheros more human than we think? Do they crumble?

These concepts should have been explored in a better way rather than focus on meaningless trivilaties. So many scenes like the Jailbreak, the love making scenes between the heros and heroines were largely useless in the story telling, but necessary to appear commerical. The reason this movie failed was trying to appeal to a commercial audience by roping them into the visual awe and forgetting that many people sometimes need

End Result: Movies at 5/10 mostly for visuals. But it’s a far better tribute paid to Alan Moore than that effin idiot who killed the Batman. Watch it for seeing how far we have progressed in visual effects in Cinema, but read the book if you want some deep meaning into this. As far as I can tell the movie is good for those that don’t expect anything, don’t read between the lines and don’t expect to go in with prejudged thoughts.

{UPDATE} – Thanks to Pegu I now have the Watchmen comics with me so as is customary, I shall read it and add a follow up. My score of the movie, by itself without comparing, still stands.