One in a Million

What happens when Masala Director from Kollywood, known for dishing out potboilers with always a racy ( read rated A with a big fat circle around it) twist to it, attempts big budget Hollywood movie? You get a completely botched up attempt at South Indian history, a movie called Ayirathil Orruvan. Meaning one in a thousand.
I subjected myself to this horrific torture that lasted more than three grueling hours, all in repentance for some past life sins I think. Now I can breathe easy my Karma Counter ain’t ticking.
The plot is ambitious. A adventure across the seas to find out the Lost Island City where Chola kings have been hiding for centuries, so that they can come back to their original lands in India. Movie starts well enough, with an old archeologist going missing and another team setting out to trace him. This quest forming the whole meat of the first half. Now, time-out – Unfortunately when the movie ends, you have NO CLUE as to, WTF happened to that old archeologist. Director doesn’t seem to care. Plot derail number one.

Throughout, we are subjected to lot of gore. I think, this movie perhaps beats John Rambo part 4 in terms of number of killings per minute. I lost the count at perhaps around two hundred per minute. Insane. Gross. Disgusting.

Songs, picturised on zombies and blood sucking vampires break out for no apparent reason in the middle of forests. Another one, shot on the two lead heroines and our unfortunate hero, happens as soon as they sight the lost city. Agreed, director has to yield to the general public who cannot live without songs and dabban-kuthu dance movies in tamil movies. But this one, had me diving for cover in shame and desperation, as the two ladies gyrated in complete disdain for Indian moral values and even has a ménage-a-trois with our unfortunate hero. You need some 377-plus for this now.

The first half is linear and still pretty much okay, except for a few insane killings when villagers get slaughtered by army men in quest for the city. It has it moments, the snake-fest when camp gets over-ridden by pipe-like graphic cobras. (snigger) or the word-war in English between the two lead heroines involving a lot of F-words, B-words and use of female anatomy wholly unheard of in Tamil Cinema Or the sand-dunes and whirl-pools which is negated only by the shadow of the stone-henge ( I thought ths was a brilliant ruse!) Agreed, I haven’t seen this level of sophistication in cinematography for kollywood.

It is only when after having found the Lost Empire of Cholas, that director gets a brain-seizure and lets the plot go haywire and completely bizarre. Our three main protagonists suffer some kind of soul-invasion. From here on, I was just baulking at the screen.

We’re transported to the underground city of malnourished, black and skinny cholas ruled over by a fat, madcap of a King who keeps grunting and making a lot of animal noises in general. The black, (disgusting looking painted on-coal black) I presumed because these poor bastards have not seen sunlight in ages and are living on scraps of meat that the King brings in for them. Given to dancing like possessed witches, starved to the point of cannibalization, and bloody games involving giants thrashing out unfortunate prisoners head with a plastic boulder on a chain. I mean, Come On! Mr. Selvaraghavan, who the hell taught you History of South India? An uninhibited massacre of our rich Pandya and Chola culture.
This was their main repast? Phew! Dude, wake up. Such grossly horrific misinterpretation of precious past leaves a lot to be desired.

The plot just kept going downhill on turbo-charged nitro boosters. One of the heroines suddenly gets reminded that she’s a blood-thirsty Pandian lusting for the fat madcap chola king ( Played to the perfection by quirky weird Parthibhan who I think is the secret weapon in the movie, Director’s surprise for viewers. Sorry, if this was a spoiler.)

I was literally cringing in my seat at the attempt of bharatnatyam by Reema Sen ( the blood thirsty Pandian, remember?) and what follows as supposed seduction scene of the King. My stomach was hurting from the bouts of laughter at the end of it. I mean, Hot Damn! Reema darling, you are such an underrated actress, you ought to get more such meaty roles to sink your vampire teeth into. ( God, I still cant stop smiling at her antics, it was simply hilarious!)
The climax which involves another round of mindless killings of the chola foot-soldiers braving blazing uzi sub-machine guns with just iron shields and spears, is another example of how deranged the director’s mind has become. I think the movie must have consumed the poor guy. Such a disastrous depiction. The army men, hungry wolves in human form, then go on a killing rampage and rape every living soul in the Cholan empire. Here’s where our hero ( Yeah yeah, there is a hero, Come On! Time to wake up and play the role, my son.) rises up to be the Aayirathil Orunvan ( One in a Thousand) and disappears into the darkness with the heir-apparent of Chola Empire. Leaving a lot of room for part-II. Of course.

Our Hero, Karthi who does one movie in three years ( Yes, Aamir Khan here comes your competition, ha!) provides comic relief and is probably the only bright spark in the movie. But otherwise, a perfectly good way to mess up your weekend. Buoyed on by promises of an adventure quest and time-travel, I fell prey to this grand epic of a cataclysmic disaster in the movie world. Am sure, critics have reviewed this and touted it to be an achievement in Tollywood. Well, I would put it as the same. The achievement of how a wholly deranged mind (subject to a troubled childhood) interprets and slaughters our dear South Indian Culture.
Go read your textbooks sir, before you make Lara-Croft meets Mummies- meets – The Ruins- part two for this One in a Million grand gala.

Train-Jack.

What do you get when you mix two of the most critically acclaimed talented actors of Hollywood, a treacherous train-hijack plot, a heady mix of edgy nerve-wracking music that pitches you on the edge of your seat in anticipation of some explosion onscreen, colorful side-characters and an extremely talented director behind the camera panning those taut thriller shots?
You get Taking of Pelham 123.
A potboiler of a thriller, minus the mindless la-transformer style explosions & skimpily clad-Megan fox but a lot more edgier and intelligent and definitely more gripping than ever. John Travolta carries off his role with such ease and panache, that you have to stand up and clap when he almost gets off with the loot at the end of the movie, but then, you clap even louder when Denzel Washington, playing the common man, stuck in a government job, trumps him in the end. Sorry for giving away the plot, but there. Denzel Washington packs in such an amazingly measured performance, of a resilient man, who stands up for his family, an honest train-dispatcher who keeps his wits around him while the whole of New York is sent into a tizzy by the erstwhile-wallstreet-whizkid-turned-terrorist “Mr.Ryder” who nurses a grudge against the system.
This story talks about an honest man, who in spite of having been humiliated and pushed to a corner by the unjust system governing our lives these days, stands up for it, and becomes the Hero for the state of New York by trumping the angst-ridden Wall-Street Swindler in the end.
All said and done, stale story line, common man getting stuck in a rigmarole coz of the government screwing up someone’s life who decides to become an anarchist and takes on a state. But John Travolta and Denzel Washington breathe magic into the characters and the whole slick editing makes the whole film immensely enjoyable. I walked out of the theatre feeling as smug as Denzel Washington, like he’d saved the State of New York and was walking back home to his wife and kids with half a gallon milk in his hands.
Good Movie after long!

The Lookout

A Discovery.....

Have you guys heard of this sleepy Heist thriller called the Lookout? A very low profile kinda movie which has gone on to become one of the biggest cult hits on the DVD circuit. Panned by many critics as one of the best movies of 2007, it really is a brilliant effort by debut director, Scott Frank. Run of the Mill story, but the screenplay, acting and camera work really takes it to the next level. I loved it.

Stephen Gordon Levitt plays the title role. Chris Pratt, the popular high school good looking rich brat who has his ‘whole life ripped out from underneath him’ in one deathly car crash. What happens next in his life and how he struggles to cope with his inner demons, his guilt and finally manages to gain the upper hand in this duel forms the backdrop of the whole story. The part where it gets engaging (and where it starts to become that thriller), is a planned bank heist. Where he is enlisted to play the lookout during the job. The same bank where he plays a night janitor because he’s got a short term memory loss after the horrible accident. The entry of Mathew Goode, who plays the antagonist, kinda spices things up and things slowly pick up speed. How Chris stays ahead of the goons in spite of his shortcomings is engaging. But what I loved about the movie were two things –
One, there was not a single wasted sequence or shot. Very measured, all very well-knit together frames.
Two, the opening sequence. Call me a sucker, but the music of the movie which is nothing to write home about, found in me a big fan. I discovered this new band called My Morning Jacket. The opening soundtrack is mindblowing-ly awesome! Such amazing tabs and a full two minutes and eighteen seconds of the gat just jamming away to pure glory. Really nice, you should check the first five minutes of the movie when the opening credits roll on. And of course the digitally created fire-fly sequence. Damn Cute! I sure would love to drive my girl out on a such a night where the sky is lit by stars and fire-flies and nothing else in an open sports car. Sigh!

Take it from me, a big music buff, One Big Holiday by My Morning Jacket is a damn feel-good-track for you to wake up to in the mornings!