Skip to main content

Rajapattai: High on Brawn, Low on Brain

Appeared in City Express, the daily supplement of The New Indian Express, on Tuesday, December 27, 2011
A still from Rajapattai... Has the director bitten more than what he can chew?

Despite having an enviable star cast, and a noted director and music director at its helm, Rajapattai (king's way), a masala movie in essence, has a storyline that makes the viewer realise that stifling yawns is more daunting than playing rapid-fire chess.
No surprises in this love plot

'Annal' Murugan (Vikram) is a gym instructor who aspires to become a villain. A righteous person, he saves Dakshinamurthy (Vishwanath) from goons who are out to bump him off. It transpires that Dakshinamurthy was fleeing his greedy son (Avinash), who wants him killed for his wealth. In offering support to the geriatric, Murugan makes many an enemy, and by extension a slew of fight sequences follow. In exchange, the senior citizen helps his protector in his conquest for love, who is cupid-struck with Deeksha Seth. Things turn murky when a local politician, Akka (Mithra Kurien) – no prizes for guessing whom the character is based upon – plots the eviction of an orphanage run by Dakshinamurthy.
Fisticuffs that bore one to death

So far so good. Vikram revels in displaying his sinewy contours and bashing up his adversaries to pulp; Vishwanath, as the tutor of the various ‘sutras’ of love, leads the viewer on a rib-tickling journey. Deeksha is the movie’s official PYT – whose appearance is limited to the romantic scenes/numbers. Rajapattai tumbles down the abyss in the second half, never to recover, what with the barrage of incongruous sequences that take for granted the viewer’s suspension of logical thinking. And pray, what was the director trying to prove with the episode involving Pradeep Rawat apart from extending the movie’s duration? As if this were not enough, Yuvan Shankar Raja’s background score sticks out like a sore thumb. Rajapattai’s lone saving grace, though, is its running time, at only around two hours.
No 'O Podu' here...

It is hard to imagine that this was the director who once gave us movies like Vennila Kabbadi Kuzhu and Azhagarsaamiyin Kudhirai. Vikram, in a song, appears as Jack Sparrow, The Joker and forest brigand Veerappan, croons a number, shakes a leg with Shriya Sharan and Reema Sen, but fails to overshadow the movie’s inconsistencies. He is verily the boy atop the burning deck of the Casablanca that is Rajapattai.


Images: (southdreamz.com, filmics.com, chennaionline.com)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chennai’s Fourth Estate at War

Touching upon competitive spirit, the legendary writer George Orwell, in an essay dated 1945, had described sport as war minus the shooting. He could very well be referring to the ongoing veiled battle between two of India's English dailies. When “India’s national newspaper since 1878” and the “Largest read English daily in the world” decide to slug it out over Chennai’s newspaper readership, rest assured that the battle would spill over to the TV media, as was witnessed recently. Cheeky indeed were the ads that thumbed the nose at one another; though, few were in doubt over who the target was. To the uninitiated, the two newspapers – The Hindu and The Times of India (TOI) , respectively – have modus operandi that are as identical as chalk is to cheese, or uppu (salt) is to upma , a South Indian snack. The "war" in question is the race to get hold of the average Chennaiite, and eventually the Indian, newspaper reader’s attention. And no, this piece of opinion isn...
8 comments
Read more

Why the editorial is the unsung hero of any newspaper

A tad autobiographical, this account encapsulates my experiences at a news organisation. Why wait until 50 or 60 to compose one? Hell, who knows, this could even be its blueprint! So, here goes my first stab at chronicling myself... I was prepared for all kinds of weird questions for my first job interview as a journalist four years ago, for the post of a sub-editor, but I never anticipated this one that caught me off guard. Noting that I preferred to work in the editorial than the reporting section, a HR representative at the organization asked in almost an air of dismissal, implying that the editorial is something redundant, “After all, we have Microsoft Word, in built with grammar and spell check capabilities, so why must I hire you?” I stared at him blankly for a moment as a smile grew on his face, perhaps out of exult at having stumped me. I trotted a familiar refrain, which I am sure he would have encountered countless times, “Because I am passionate about writing a...
6 comments
Read more

Is Thuglak’s Editor Going the Thuglak Way?

The front-page cartoons of this magazine have always been considered a barometer of the nation, and particularly Tamil Nadu’s, political landscape. Rib-tickling and dripping with sarcasm, it’s following has gradually swelled, though, not in dramatic terms, as certain high-profile media houses would flaunt. Be it the DMK or the AIADMK, the BJP or Congress, the Left or National Conference, its leaders have been the butt of many an acerbic but thought-provoking joke. In fact, it may not sound out of context to liken this publication to the American humour magazine, MAD. Sample this: during the height of Anna Hazare’s high-profile fast against corruption, resulting in hectic parleys between his team of lieutenants and the Parliament, this magazine ran a front page cartoon with Team-A on one side and representatives of the UPA government on the other. Team-A, which remains silent when its demands such as inclusion of the Judiciary and prime minister under the Lokpal Bill’s ambit are met...
6 comments
Read more