Thuppakki

I never imagined I would actually review a Vijay movie, I admit, I AM NOT A VIJAY FAN. You could call me a Vijay hater, but it’s not him I hate, it’s his kind of movies I hate. When was the last time he did a performance oriented role? Never!. He is a good actor but a terrible selector I should say, He has a huge and massive fan base and he is trying to emulate the tried and tested formula of masala, but look at your competitors dude, they are all trying varieties, masala’s of a different genre altogether. High time mate, high time you changed your style. Get some substance, you are 50 films old in the industry and you are not in the 1980’s or 90’s when you could do away with masals’s where people throng the theaters to watch the hero kick fifty A$$’es without even touching ground for once.

Now to the Movie, Thuppaki is a “Vijay movie” made by AR Murugadoss, you have the typical hero introduction scene with a fight followed by a dance number, and then there is the heroine who is in the movie only for the glam quotient. The movie though is a good concept, a concept about threats by the sleeper cells of terrorist organization. But, what relevance does it have to a Tamil movie? Chennai is not a place where there have been many terrorist attacks and thus the director cannot make the movie in Chennai, but the problem is a national problem and thus he chose Mumbai which is synonymous with terrorist attacks. Then he comfortably casts some Tamil actors as main support characters and then a couple of Bollywood villains to complete the frame of the movie.

To the cast, You have Vijay (Jagadish) who is a Captain in the Indian Army, Kajol Agarwal (Nisha) who is a boxer (I will come to the sporting abilities of this girl some time later), Sathyan (Balaji) as a Sub Inspector with Mumbai Police, Vidyut Jamwal who is the head of the Sleeper Cell, Jayaram (Major V Ravichandran) as Vijay’s commander, Zakir Hussain as the Joint Secretary of Defence and Mano Bala (as Kajol’s Father) and quite a lot of actors in small support roles. The story line goes like this, Captain Jagadish returns to Mumbai from kashmir on his yearly holiday and is taken straight from the station to see Nisha who is the girl of his parents interest, he declines the proposal with vague reasons of the girl being old-fashioned e.t.c while in reality Nisha is supposedly a boxing champ who goes by the nickname of Boxer Nisha in the locality. While on vacation Jagdish is always accompanying Balaji while he is on official duty and on one such instance Jagdish and Balaji happen to witness a bomb explosion on a bus and Jagdish as expected apprehends the Bomber. The cops prove that the bomber is actually a sleeper functionary of terrorist organization.

The Bomber escapes from police custody, while in reality it was Jagdish who actually caught the bomber on his attempt to escape, Jagdish understands that the Bomber and his sleeper cell counterparts are planning to explode 12 bombs in the city in the mean time establishing himself as an agent with the Defence Intellegence Agency (DIA).  Thus, Jagdish with 12 of his army friends manage to kill all the bombers at the same time across different locations in the city. While the police is clueless about the encounter in which all terrorists were killed, Vidyut the leader of the cell is forced to come to Mumbai to avenge Vijay for salvaging his plans and killing his brother who was one of the bombers.  He finds the similarities of the killers (all were wearing Blazers which is quite uncommon in India) and tries to pin down the people responsible, Vidyut figures out that it should have been people who attended a Christian marriage on the day, he reaches the grooms house on finding out that the groom is an army guy, he kills everyone in the family (except the bride and groom who are happily honey moon-ing) and manages to get group photos of all the people who attended the marriage. He identifies one prey in each of the friends group, kidnaps one girl from each familes to figure out who the killer is. Vijay who is on Vidyut’s trail manages to switch on of the girls with his own sister and eventually saves all the girls killing 16 people in a gore fight sequence, post the second defeat does Vidyut get to avenge, if so how forms the rest of the story.

Murugadoss does manage a breezy script and the movie is considerably fast except for the divertive songs and kajol Agarwal. The sequence of events which leads to the encounter of bombers is a very well worked out portion and forms the crux of the movie. Though the movie lacks logic in some areas, you can enjoy this film if you are ready to shut yourself down in song sequences and when Kajol Agarwal is on the screen, just like how we did to Shivaji the Boss when Shirya is on screen. The action sequences were good and simple. Cinematography by Santhosh Sivan was very good and he captured Mumbai to its essence, and he and the director actually does a cameo in the “Google Google” song. Music by Harris is nothing  much to write home about, he seems to have mixed and matched a couple of his own tunes to gives us 6 songs in the movie, except for “Google Google” nothing lingers on to your chords.

If I am to dissect the movie for its positives and negatives, I would say the script, screen play and cinematography along with Vijay’s no nonsense (when I say no non sense am referring to his usual style) performance has to be on the positive side. Vidyut Jamwal was convincingly cruel and he did a wonderful and silent performance. I wished somebody gave him a boy next door kind of a romantic movie; he is good hero material and an even better villain. The negatives of the film would be Kajal Agarwal, her character is a complete letdown to the movie, and somebody teach this girl some sports, there is one song in which she is shown to be playing different games and she cannot even convincingly act as a sportswomen? Pathetic. Jayaram, an actor of such talent and caliber, I wonder why he agreed to do this stupidly extended cameo, was he supposed to be a comedian? I expected his character to display some shades of grey which could have been the surprise element of the film to the likes of “Saroja” and “Dham Dhom” but this one was nothing. He was just shown as a clown. Sathyan as the cop was a misfit, Music as I mentioned earlier was a big let down and so was dance choreography; it did not do justice to Vijay’s dancing skills.

Go watch this movie to drain the Diwali hang over and don’t forget to ask yourself a number of questions when you are walking out of the screen. One question I for sure had was, there are close to 21 murders and 2 suicides in the city and all were sleeper cells of terrorist organization, what was the police in the city doing? That was good option to have an efficient actor play a cop and do a parallel investigation ending with him finding Vijay as the reason for all this and closing the movie on a high as an Army Jawan saving the country from big terrorist attacks.

This movie is dedicated to all the jawans guarding our country and has some direct references to the sacrifice they take to guard our country. The final sequences does bring a feeling of pride if you feel for the Jawans, the way they take their return train never to know if they will be alive for their next vacation. Jai Hind.