Endhiran – Monstrous !!!

Last evening, we managed to get tickets for Endhiran – the talk of the town, and ended up spending nearly 3 hours in the theatre watching the most touted movie in India

To sum it up in one word – Monstrous was what i would call this movie. Starring the Superstar Rajnikanth and former Miss World(maybe of plastic land) this movie has been made with an enormous budget and boasts some serious Hollywood technicians. Not much to talk about the story line, there is nothing there at all.

Scientist makes Robot
Robot breaks scientist’s heart
Scientist breaks robot apart
- end of part 1 -
Robot does a Jesus, Robot does a Judas
scientist kills Judas, the baby is disarmed
- end of movie -

The typical elements of a Rajnikanth movie is missing – good rich guy has a problem with bad rich guy, becomes poor, has family trauma and then makes it big, of course with the help of a classy hot heroine. This movie is all about making a humanoid robot, trying to get the army to accept it and in between this whole episode, multiple failures, partial successes and the judiciary mocking the whole creation and shelving into a place aka Area 51 till the world is ready for the beast !

Special effects are a plenty, some of them slickly made and some can be forgotten. A scene inspired by 3Idiots delivery can be simply forgotten with the robot trying to deliver a baby in an ancient method and telecasting the delivery through wireless transmitter to monitors and television screens. Boy, would data security firms get fits while seeing this. Of course the robot is supposed to be generations ahead and well, the look and feel is so plastic that one wonders whether it was created eons earlier and left to rot on some planet. Seeing through the robot’s eye could have been enhanced like Terminator series, but these are left untouched to a great extent. To that effect, use of special effects has been disregarded. Maybe its for the masses who do not appreciate such details. But when you are making a movie with artificial intelligence, neural networks and software lingo, this is the least that could have been done

Tamil cinema needs comedy tracks aplenty and this is true for this movie. However, the director could have avoided childish comedies like the mosquito scene. And please, you are not shooting a commercial here and having names for mosquitoes seem a bit overkill for a space age movie. Electro magnetism finds a lot of mention in this movie. In fact it is probably the common thread in the movie. Asimov too finds a mention in the beginning. But the robot has built in flaws which go against Asimov’s principles and this is not corrected subsequently too. Maybe Shankar has got his own laws of robotics

Aishwarya finds passing mentions in the movie just like the mosquito. Her character starts abruptly and does not flow through the movie. She is more like an accompaniment to the proverbial masala dosa. You could eat the dosa even without it. She does show her age. Strangely, i must admit i had a fleeting glimpse of her wearing a body suit. Either she has become a prude, or the technician during touch up failed to notice it. The Peruvian ladies (i hope) featured in one of song sequences sizzle and the heroine looks more like a wet torch compared to them.

The emotional aspects of the robot lack punch. Compare this to the Bicentennial man and Robin Williams and you would see what directors can do. I must say that there is no fault of Rajini here. Being the star he is, his movies such as Johnny and Dharmadurai truly shows his emotional swings. The director lacked the brilliance to bring them out. The one thing that was done right by the director was bringing out the villain in Rajani. Rajani is simply superb, right from his costume, his gait and the cackling laugh which becomes a full blown, deep throated punch. His teasing of the righteous scientist with a sheep’s bleating is pure evil. Again, just like the re-entry of Sivaji as the bald man with the maniacal eyes, the evil robot Rajni does his part to the hilt. Kudos to Rajini

The movie ends on a very strange tone. The judiciary closes the case against the scientist just like an open and shut case. Further it stops the deployment of robot in society. Obviously, the robot was not built for a society. It was built for war. The least that could have been done was to downgrade it from version 2.0 to version 1.5. The dismantling scene of the robot leaves pangs of laughter in anyone’s mind.

The songs can be disregarded from a musical perspective. The background score lacks the punch. The picturisation of songs though are quite interesting and the Indian viewers manage to visit a new country once again. Non Dravidian dance steps is not the hero’s forte and Prabhu Deva seems to have got it right. Robotic movements seem to define the day and this is most satisfying.

The movie is an entertainer nevertheless, but fails in story, screenplay, audio and succeeds in special effects, fight scenes and dance sequences. If you are an ardent Rajani fan you would wonder what on earth prompted him to do this movie and if you are new to Rajani you will still wonder what on earth prompted one to take such a movie. This is more of a Shankar’s movie and manages to lift its head and run about thanks to Rajani

Who dares watches

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