The way the movie kick starts is all
good. The firt 15-20 minutes, till the first action sequence is
great. Kamal as the Kathak exponent excels, as usual. His mannerisms,
way he walks, talks, all very reflective of the art form he is in
love with. His transformation to the blood thirsty assassin/spy is
very well captured. The visual effects are out standing. The
background is conducive of the happenings on the screen. All is well,
till then.
Post the action sequence, the film
falls flat on its face. Why would Kamal want to make such a
run-off-the-mill spy thriller is very questionable. Why again would
he want to involve so much of human emotions is a bigger question.
What starts off as a promising thriller
runs on to become a "why war?" documentary and again brings
us back to the wafer thin plot of a spy thriller. And keeps doing
this again and again. One moment you are in Afghanistan and the next
in NYC. Not that this type of story telling is not good cinema. Just
that once you are in Afghanistan, it is all about jihad(holy war),
children, hapless wives, mothers, mutilated bodies, war torn towns.
And once you are in NYC you follow the wafer thin plot of a wannabe
spy thriller. And the sequence keeps repeating again and again and
again, till you grow weary of it.
Why do film makers and Kamal at this
new age think that spy cameras installed in offices, data stored in
hard disks and thumb drives and cash kept in lockers in office are a
great idea of a film? Why would it interest movie goers to know that
the actor Kamal is a realist but then the character in the movie is a
devout muslim who has lost his faith in all gods? How many times will
we need to bear the "punch" dialogues around Kamal and his
"endha kadavul" type cliches. Maybe it is just me. But it
was overbearing.
The movie is well shot. Technically
brilliant. The BG and overall music is good. Performances are, ahem,
nice. But the characters are just wasted, actually, blasted away to
non-existence.
How many times would you need to show a
boy with innocence written all over his face become a suicide bomber?
How many times a good doctor is killed, just for the heck of it? Do
we need all this to understand the mindless violence that is called
war, holy or not?
Trying to balance between the
documentary and the spy thriller, Kamal fails in impressing the
audience with either.
What is Andrea doing in the movie? Why
an MI6 agent? Too many unanswered equations.
Overall, a nights sleep wasted and
belief in big budget, big star movies depleted to the core. Small
budget movies like Pizza, Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanum have made
worthy watching than the Billa's, Maatran's, Alex Pandian's and now
Viswaroopam joins the let down bandwagon.
