Kaththi

A popular beverage company, that also owns a popular snack brand, has been running a campaign the past few days, urging people to go home (visit their hometowns) and celebrate Diwali with their loved ones. Having celebrated the last couple of Diwalis with my entire family in Gurgaon, and missing them this year, I’ll be lying if I said this campaign didn’t affect me. Though I didn’t visit Chennai exactly this Diwali, watching Kaththi at a multiplex in Gurgaon, gave me a feeling of having visited Chennai!! Never before have I seen such whistles & claps for any Tamil hero, even Rajnikanth, in Gurgaon! Forget the hero; the response from the crowd was amazing when the name of the music director, Anirudh, appeared on the screen!! The heroine Samantha and the director, AR Murugadoss (who appears in a single scene) were also given rousing receptions by the audience!! Overall, the full house audiences in the multiplex made me feel as if I was watching the movie in Chennai!!

The movie’s storyline is about the much clichéd Doppelgangers (one a crook and another, a good Samaritan) swapping places. The movie opens with an interesting chase, and then just meanders along aimlessly, before getting you interested a good 15-20 minutes later. The movie’s plot will definitely remind you of the Vikram-starrer “Dhool”. Though the screenplay is reasonably brisk, it lacks sufficient twists and turns to stop you from comparing this film with “Dhool”. It is here that you feel a bit let down by the director Murugadoss! But, credit to him for having picturized the songs quite well, though they look completely out of place and hinder the pace of the movie! It looks as if a couple of brilliant music videos have been forcibly incorporated into the movie at inappropriate scenes!!

The heroine Samantha doesn’t have much work to do, except to dance with Vijay in the songs. Even the villain, played by Neil Nitin Mukesh, hasn’t been characterized strongly, like say, Vidyut Jamwal’s role in “Thuppaki”.

Special mention to an action sequence involving coins!!  has been conceived and executed brilliantly!!  Vijay fans are going to lap it up!!

Coming back to “Thuppaki”, it was a completely Murugadoss film that had Vijay in the lead role. But “Kaththi” is a Vijay film directed by Murugadoss!! Don’t miss if you are a Vijay fan. Else, you can wait for the television premiere!!

(Originially published in Facebook on 24th October 2014)