ScreenArt

Where do I begin? The incredible story, or the lazy screenplay, or the juvenile direction or the heartless performances or... I face the same problem while reviewing very good movies too. I don't know where to start just because all the technicians and artistes work together and their team effort shows on the screen - the photography, production design, action, music, direction and all other aspects of film making are just inseparable. In the case of movies like 'Pokkiri', they all stand very distinctly apart - as if the cameraman had a stiff with the set director and they both didn't talk for the entire shooting period, or the actor differed from the director's point of views and they both decided to do whatever they wanted to do. You could write an essay on what went wrong in each department, and you'll have enough material for a second one.

'Pokkiri' is the story of Tamizh (Vijay), a guy who offers his muscle power services to city mafia. For money, he would kill and plunder, but not touch children and women. For most of the running length, he hangs around with his friends, falls in, out of and again in love with Shruthi (Asin) and kills people at a frequency a common man would scratch an itch. Since we all know that young people look upto Vijay, he can't don the role of a ruthless killer as he's initially portrayed. So, towards the end comes the expected twist in the tale. By the time his gun runs out of bullets, an international don (Prakash Raj) and his gangs are dead and so are most of the audience in the theatre seats.

I have no complaints against the masala nature of the story. But the execution is so bad that will put a teenage European filmmaker to shame. Vijay's introduction: as he jumps over a plank, green chillies and lemons are strewn in air next to him - a symbolic 'drishti' neutralisation. He utters self-serving words like 'indha pongalukku sama collection' and lyrics that goes 'padapporen enna pathi, kelungada vaya pothi'. The dialogue writers should be lynched for their involvement in the movie - almost every second line written for Vijay is written with the intention of being a punch dialogue. Please understand dear writer, just because the movie has that many punches (and that too off-target punches), the audience are knocked-out very badly. The love between Tamizh and Sruthi is developed neither coherently nor maturely. Vadivelu rubs salt in the painful screenplay.

I saw this movie on a weekday for a matinee show in Virudhunagar, which I guess is a proper B center in cinema trade parlance. The theatre was moderately crowded, whistles and claps for Vijay and hilarious laughter for Vadivelu (he urinates over himself, how's that for a comedy sketch?). I saw the audience leaving the premises with a satisfied smile implying that the experience was worth the money. Vijay openly admits that he wouldn't experiment and would stick to the hero formula. Nothing wrong with star power, but shouldn't it entertain all the segments of cinephiles? This is clearly a downward spiral. Prabhudeva, who debuts as a director in Kodambakkam seems to have struck the right chord, only that the chord is so jarring.