"7-am arivu" - an worthless offering

Saw 2 very different movies by very different directors who have attained great fame in very short time. One relatively old. One brand new. One @ cinema hall. One in the movie channel @ home. One costed me. One free. One having a silly actor in the lead. The other got a much superior talent in the lead. One super success. One is a sure flop!

7-am arivu

Wow! I went to watch this movie with shit loads of expectation and excitement. The name sounds fantastic. A possible good tamil movie in the offing. That apart, you can't blame me for all the enthusiasm, check out the combination:

The quartet that wasted my evening

• Wonderfully talented, hard-working & super-handsome Suriya.
• Extremely capable, critically acclaimed & innovative director AR Murugadoss.
• Super gorgeous & yummy Shruti Hasan.
• Well established, supremely melodies & recipient of many awards Harris Jayaraj.

Well, with this combo I dare anybody to question the outcome. This combo could be an atomic bomb waiting to burst out loud in the box-office. If you thought so too like I did then you are not very wrong. Just a slight difference would be: It was indeed an atom bomb waiting to burst but it did not blow away the other releases with its explosion but it imploded under its own expectation & weight. What a hotch-potch work from the team!!! Can't believe 3 out of this 4 were involved in one of the brilliant forward thinking movie like Ghajini! Law of averages, I suppose! :-(

The highlights first.

Bodhi Dharman

Nice educative start. Keeps the audience in rapt attention with the information about Bodhi Dharman.

Bodhi Dharman

I was fascinated by the information and Suriya has done a good job as the 5th Century monk. His eyes spoke. His presence was powerful. His appearance rustic. His face had the rugged but calm charm. The director handled these scenes with finesse and to the point. In fact, when the movie FINALLY ended we felt these parts should have been given more proportion in the movie time. These were nice patriotic scenes. Makes you feel proud to be an Indian & more so a Tamilian. Suddenly the name of the movie 7-am arivu (i.e., seventh sense) kinda made a lot of sense. It set the expectation quite high up and also gave an insight onto what is about to come. The Kalaripayattu stunt scenes are brilliantly taken. The raising dust & the body-language of Suriya is a treat to watch. Also these scenes gave a very ethereal feel to Suriya's role & what to expect from the modern-day Suriya's character. When this sequence ends, the movie stops to make sense. But the audience are unaware until a lot into the rest of the movie.

Lights & Camera

The very thin & heavy built
look not very different!

You gotta give it to Ravi K. Chandran for a very technical work. Nice work. The lights and the angle has been typical of his work. Very right. He has shown Shruti Hasan extremely beautiful. There are moments/scenes in the movie where you will blown over by the gorgeous beauty and the pretty face of Shruti Hasan. All thanks to Ravi Chandran to have captured it that way. She is a very very thin slim svelte gal and Suriya is hard & very masculine. Also Shruti Hasan is, at least, 2~3 inches taller than Suriya. But, on screen, when they are together you never find the difference in height & hardly figure out the difference in their size. The angles Ravi Chandran has chosen should go into the textbooks of cinematographers as reference on how to counter-act the physical difference between the lead with technology & acute sense and understanding of camera angles.

Visuals were at its best

Also his lights was on spot. I liked a few nice touches like when Suriya is on the bike he had lit his face and just about the right amount. Also the blue serial lights to light up the insides of the SUV driven by Jhonny Tri Nguyen, the villian, was fascinating and beautiful to watch. Well, after all he has been around for nearly 20 years and he has given the world of cinematography some fantabulous scintillating work in the recent past, so nothing unexpected from him. All said, this definitely deserves mention, there is a particular song (a slow sad song after the break-up) which is a visual treat. Watch out for that song. Brilliant settings. Great lights. Awesome costume (simple). That song's visuals were, for me, the best moments of the movie. Classy. Colorful. Soulful. Experimental. That song was a photographers' delight. One can learn still photography by just watching that song. :-)

Subtitles

The movie has subtitles all through the movie. It sounded a bit optimistic. Were AR & team thinking of releasing this movie to English speaking audience? Really? Has Indian films (esp Tamil movies) grown up to that? Hmm.. I wonder.

Shoes

I loved the different variants of shoes Suriya wore. Very colorful and vibrant. I wish I could own a few of those pairs. :-)

I guess that's it. I can't think of any more good points for the movie.

The pain points.

Suriya's performance

You should have got an idea when I listed subtitles & shoes in the highlight of the film! :-) The performance was not great. Suriya did NOT do a BAD job! But I have seen far better performances from him.

Forgettable performance from Shruti
Not his best by Surya

He is one actor who gives his best in ANY film but I wonder why he did not here. For one he did not receive much support (or any support, I should say) from his lead-lady (Shruti Hasan) but that has not stopped him from performing in the past. He is, typically, a one-man machine that churns out brilliant performance. But he failed me miserably; went with a lot of hope of watching this bugger spew out another classic performance. His role did not have the depth other than Bodhi Dharman part. A very shallow role & he could not add colors to it either. A guy who has been cheated by the gal he thought loved him too just 2 days ago would not go spending his entire day with her however serious the pretext be! But Suriya's character does! How?! Unbelievable! No wonder Suriya could not do justice to his role. Ever since that scene Suriya never looked his powerful self on screen. Probably he never believed in that part but did it anyways. He probably lost belief in character. Never the less, his performance was NOT forgetful but not worth mentioning either.

Shruti Hassan

Bloody hell! What is wrong with her? Has she ever seen her pa acting or her mother's work or even her pa's current muse's (Gouthami) performance?

Gorgeous but at unease

At least, her ex-live-in-boy-friend's acting prowess would have been enough for her to do a decent job in this movie. The theme of the movie was about tapping ancestral talents and benefiting from it. If only Shruti Hasan can tap her father's talent she would be burning the screen with her scorching presence and brilliant acting. This is my first film of hers and I was mightily disappointed. She looked so uneasy in the first half. She was slightly okay in the 2nd half but by which time we were bored of her. She can't act for nuts. And, her voice! Oh, please! You are in a movie that promotes being a Tamilian & in fact, proud of being one and her tamil is forgettable to say the least. She should have asked for a dubbing or at least the director should have enforced it. She is hot, I give that to her. She should try & get comfortable in her own skin and be confident of her presence on screen. In his hero-centric industry, unless the heroine has a strong screen presence she has no chance of a future. And, yeah, sit with your papa & learn some skills. If you have already then put it to some use. We love your papa and do justice to his fans like us.

Songs & love story

Boy! Boy! Another great let down. As I am typing this I am listening to Vaseegara song from Minnale movie. The killer song. In my opinion his best best so far. And, I can't believe it is the same music director who has composed songs for this movie too.

No songs stood in mind & timing was terrible
More over, non-existent love story

Harris Jayraj has not given any such numbers in this movie. I had not heard any song from this movie prior to watching the movie and I came out of the cinema hall without remembering even one song from the movie!

That apart, except for the introduction song of Suriya not a single song made any sense in its timing. The songs came in randomly. They are running away from a killer hot on their pursuit and they are having a romantic song!!! For christ sake, AR get your reins together and put a practical jigsaw puzzle together. Also the love story was very very very very shallow is what I would say if I am very generous & extremely nice to the director. If I have to put my actual thoughts my blogger id would be blocked for ever! Giving partial importance to the love story, the director lost the track of the original intention of the movie. The worst part is he hasn't done justice to the love story either. In essence, it is a mesh of mess created by a very unclear director. Why did he get confused by the non-existent love-story is unclear to me. When such talented directors go hay-wire & confused the state of the future tamil movies is not consistent! Unless consistent these talented young directors can never fill up the void left by the yesteryear's trio - Balachander, Bharatirajaa & Balu Mahendra. Waiting for such talents to revitalize tamil film industry. We need no flash in the pan. We need consistent folks.

Stunts

What a let down this was! What makes the stunts team to think a badly done graphic sequence would convince the audience or even have an impact on the audience? Esp when the cars were flying like pigeons one-after another for over 10 minutes? The stunts were lame! The flying cars. The hypnotized strangers having an expression like one of the zombies from Resident Evil series. When you got somebody like Johnny Tri Nguyen use him. Sweat him out. Don't just parade him. He is supremely talented and extremely flexible. The stunts could have been beyond belief of Indian cinema if only they has used him. What a waste of talent. Any unknown Chinese guy roaming on the Indian streets could have done what he did in this movie. Finally when he gets his due chance to fist-fight it out with Suriya the fight sequence was... to say the best... worthless of even Suriya's stature let alone a Hollywood stunt double's stature. All Johnny Tri Nguyen was doing was ramp-walking. Staring at people with a slight tilted head. Walk with an expression as if he is God. Man, he is a stunt double, if you ask him to jump of a cliff without a shute he would do and still be intact to do further stunts. Grr... Couldn't stand him staring people in the name of hypnotism. Can't believe this is the same stunt director who choreographed super awesome stunts in Ghajini not far in the past! Peter Hein dude, what's wrong with you??

In other words, folks please please please keep off this movie. Not worth the money. You can watch it once. Sitting at home. Definitely not worth going to the cinema hall.

If you are wondering what was the other movie I saw & mentioned in the header? It is 7/G Rainbow Colony. I loved it. It was perfect. Not much of mess by the director Selvaraghavan. He knew what he is doing. Not a single wasted song. Not a single useless scene. Perfect. Despite very bad acting by the leads (arguably, the lead actor did a great job bcoz the character was such) yet the director gave his best. Needless to say, Yuvan Shankar Raja gave his best in that movie. So, as compared to 7-am arivu, 7/G Rainbow Colony was a killer watch.