Kathi - 1st half - 'Blade' 2nd half - 'Kathi' one side 'Mokkai'!
Cast:- Vijay, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Samantha, Satish, & Totta Roy
& Crew: - S/SP/Dir- AR Murugadoss, Music - Anirudh Ravichander
Producer:- Lyca Productions
Story/Backdrop/Screenplay
The film opens with a long shot of the Kolkatta central jail. Why Kolkatta? No idea, maybe the director can answer that! A racy start as a notorious criminal attempts to escape but what follows in the next 75 mins or so is a dis jointed crawl which makes you uneasy and squirm at times! The next 70 mins (2nd half) picks up a bit of pace and ends up with a preachy climax followed by a typical ' A.T.K.V' climax! (adi thadi kuthu vettu). If your are an ardent die-hard Vijay fan you will be willing to sit through the 1st half and perk up in parts through out the 2nd half for the rest i leave it to your own viewing judgement! Lets get to the story - A notorious criminal escapes, the prison authorities (cops) are more worried about the reputation of the prison rather than their own bumbling and stupidity. Finally one cop comes up with a stupidly brilliant idea of employing another prison inmate Kathiresan (Vijay 1) a con man cum escape artiste to track the escaped criminal. Kathiresan asks for the floor plan of the prison plan and using his brilliant powers of '3D' deduction (more of esp than any logic or reasoning powers at least in my opinion). In fact Google should think of using him to chart their maps after watching this film! Honestly I wonder what the director had in mind while conceiving the character of Kadiresan. He in his attempt to portray Vijay in a new 'Avatar' ties himself into knots and even ends up confusing Vijay! Anyways finally the police after a so called thrilling but rather comical chase nab the criminal but end up losing Kadiresan! Once again the case of the 'idiot' Tamilnadu police! Kadiresan now lands up in Chennai and as predictably meets up with his old buddy and of course you have guessed right the 'comedian' Sathish! What follows is a series of absolute 'cry able' comedy which thankfully culminates at the airport when Kathiresan meets the love of his like Samantha! Here the director has conceived a brilliant idea which should be implemented by the Indian government to arrest the 'brain' drain in the country. Simply plant a pretty girl at the airport and every time our boys attempt to leave the country they will fall in love with these plants and end up staying back to pursue the elusive fair maiden and chasing their love all over the country! I think Samantha was busy watching this films shooting rather than playing any kind of role in this film. The heroine is characterized as a dumb bimbo who keeps having silly 9 year old conversion with Kathiresan thereby ends up diluting Kathiresan's character in the film. Of course true to Tamil cinema culture the villain surfaces this time in the form of Nitin Mukesh a fair skinned 'aryan' who according to this director is supposedly the head of an American multi national soft drink bottling plant. This guy stoops to any level to source water for his bottling plant even if it means committing genocide by wiping an entire village. This director supposedly is against FDI's and has gone to great lengths to make multi nationals look totally evil and dastardly. It then makes one wonder how this director entered into a contract with Fox Star an American multinational film company of quite some repute. Mr.AR.Murgadoss seems to somehow have a rather very one sided & biased view on the C.E.O's of these companies. Lack of research is the probable cause for this fallacy. In fact Indira Nooyi of Pepsico and Satya Nadella of Microsoft are both not exactly fair skinned prototypes. 2. Nowadays multinationals do not at will attack or displace villagers using such strong arm methods 3. In fact multinational companies tread softly on 'people' issues like farmer displacement etc and diligently keep away from controversies which may affect the 'aam aadmi, like the TATA NANO incident in Kolkatta. In fact this is all ways my problem with directors such as these who do half baked research on serious subjects. (e.g. 7aam arivu there again this director never interacted with the Shaolin monastery or the ASI )They continuously exaggerate such issues as farmer's suicide etc which sort of paints a colored picture of the oppressor and oppressed. While 'Peepli Live' was an endearing film on the same subject 'Kathi' somehow falls flat owing to it's preachy and exaggerated content. The director uses rather simplistic examples like Strawberry condoms and egg shampoo to symbolizes the elite and the haves which hardly makes an impression. Let me get back to the story Nitin the villain tries the grab an entire village as Jeeva (Vijay 2) a Hydrologist locates a huge underwater water source in his famine struck village. After all his 'persuasion' methods fail Nitin attempts to eliminate Jeeva by hiring a 'Kooli' Padai to shoot him and the directors orchestrates a coincidence in the screen play as Kathiresan (Vijay 1) and Satish witness the attempt to kill Jeeva his look alike! Kathiresan the good samaritan saves Jeeva's life but at the same time is forced to impersonate Jeeva to save his own skin.
The 2nd half is all about how the con man Kathiresan (now impersonating Jeeva the good hearted hydrologist) moved by the plight of a few old people and villagers now living as inmates of an old aged home run by Jeeva decides to take their cause and becomes the real hero. By another sheer coincidence Samantha's uncle is also an inmate of the same old age home so Kathiresan sense of energy and purpose becomes two fold. Kathiresan wards of repeated offers of money by Nitin (off course these days the directors while keeping up with time and 'logic' have upped these figures to 50 crores and above!
(after all even the bad guys are affected by inflation). Kathiresan in his efforts to save the villagers and their property uses all the possible weaponry provided by the director like pipes,knives,wooden, iron angles and even a bag of coins donated to him by the poor diplaced villagers to outwit and bash the 'adiyals' to a messy pulp of blood and flesh! The director is clearly not a racists as he even employs a few Nigerians as 'adiyals'. The director finally also takes a dig at his version of the so called 'elitists' of Chennai. All this time Jeeva is wallowing in a Kolkatta jail pleading to the dumb cops that he is not Kathiresan but Jeeva (The Kolkotta cops are oblivious to forensics or fingerprinting etc). Finally it dawns not to the cops but the notorious criminal who senses that Jeeva is not Kathiresan. So what does he do? He arranges Jeeva's escape once again from the 'easy escape' Kolkatta prison so as to enable his 'adiyals' to follow Jeeva who is so damn gullible and naive that he is bound to lead him to the impersonator Kathiresan who was was originally instrumental in his recapture. Confused! Don't worry even the Kolkotta police were!
The Climax is all about Kathiresan who with help of the aged inmates decides to teach all all 'you' city folks a lesson that you will never forget! How? Simple! By blocking the water supply from all the Chennai reservoirs. ALL? Yes! ALL! Wow! Finally after a 5 min preachy speech by Kathiresan and one hell of a improbable 'athiradi' climax thankfully the 146 min action oriented political saga comes to an end! No! Wait there is another 5 min bit added! for those who exit early to feel sorry and disappointed! Ok! Now the film has truly ended! I wonder how someone who is repeatedly stabbed multiple times, continuously tossed around and bashed up with all possible weapons with all available material from wood/stone and even brick and concrete can finally still walk around with just a band aid and an endearing smile! Well Kathiresan can! The final speech is once again filled with similes of the Mahatma and Mother Teresa the only problem being that all the great leaders the director paid ode to followed the path of Ahimsa and hated violence in any manner whatsoever.
Vijay 1 & 2 :- A very weak and confused characterization by the director lets down Vijay the actor very badly. I feel very sorry for this actor who has been forced by the director to foray into un charted waters. In fact the director has tried vey hard to make Vijay do something different and ends up botching Vijay's certain innate strong points big time. Vijay's cheerfulness and comic sense is lost in the silliness and juvenile characterization forced on him by the director. It's sad case of losing an opportunity of effectively using a big star like Vijay!
Samantha:- I think was contracted to watch the shooting rather than play a part in this film. She could have at least paid more attention to her costumes and make up!
Nitin:- Straight out of a Raymond suiting advert! Devoid of emotions - Unacceptable as a villain by any standards!
Music:- Anirudh should stop dancing for his own music and instead start concentrating on better music and BG scores. On the whole rather pathetic!
What worked for me:- 1. The first jail break scene 2. The intro of Jeeva 3. The suicide of the farmers to highlight their cause 3. The 'vivid' imagination of the director in conjuring the coin hit and hide scene (though exaggerated) 4. Camera work and 5. Partly the final scene once again of an exaggerated delivery of extended and preachy dialogue by Kathireasn just before the climax.
What failed:- 1. Too many coincidences 2. The juvenile dialogues between Kathirean and Samantha and their complete lack of chemistry 3. Murugadoss and his one line cliched delivery a la Rajini - ' What do you think of yourself? We understand. Mind it!' Supposedly a veiled warning to all the white english speaking Tamils! 4. Marginalizing the city dwellers and attempting to create a divide between the city dwellers and the villagers by using exaggerated means.
Bottom line:- The bigger the actor the greater the director's responsibility!
Finally a question:- Why is that our Tamil heroes in spite of their larger than life image not being noticed by Hollywood directors/ producers? Is it because these films are only watched in Tamilnadu and Tamil audiences or are our directors incapable of weaving a storyline to showcase their talent elsewhere to the rest of the world ?
My Rating:- Film + 2.25 Camera +.25 total 2.25 Director -.25 Total = 2.25/5
Until next time,
Director Haricharan
23/10/2014
