Okay, so, it will be an understatement to say that Kamal Hassan is a phenomenon. Even when he is just a part of the frame, or even when the spotlight is away from him, your attention waves just converge on to him. He is that word in a sentence that’s highlighted in bold. Now what the first half of Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vikram does is that it beautifully plays with his fact that what his mere presence would do. What kind of an aura would prevail after he has left the room. A Kamal Hassan movie where only an idea of him is present. There are fumes and no fire. And it does wonders. It completely aligns with the line “Once upon a time, there lived a Ghost.” And what more to elevate things further when the observations happen through the eyes of Fahadh Fasil. I would have been completely satisfied even if the entire movie showcased Kamal this way. There was enough magic with him just grazing through the narrative in spite of being the WHAT factor.
But sadly, this magic sort of ended with that riveting interval point. The later half even though had some really good moments slowly dipped into an ordinary action movie. It wasn’t bad for sure but it didn’t carry the excitement that the first half had.
I was thinking about the irony of Kamal not crying out aloud in a funeral scene. What a flip that was especially when the scene where he cries during his son’s funeral in Nayakan became one of the biggest selling points and how the actor has been famous for his performances during death scenes. And here he is even made to shush the people who are grieving loudly.
Fahadh’s characters’ journey here is akin to Kamal’s from the 1986 version of Vikram — Undercover cop, going on investigation, has a girlfriend / wife who doesn’t have any idea about his work and becomes collateral damage. The investigation scenes are terrific.
The scene where Kamal is shown wasted was like a subtle call back to J.D.’s drunk moments from Master — both the characters start drinking because of a loss of someone close to them.
When I thought how interesting it was to synchronize a girl’s moaning from one scene with the vocals of a song (Vanithamani) in the following scene in the earlier Vikram, here a girl’s moaning sequence at a brothel house goes up many folds. Similar to Kaithi, Lokesh does a fantastic job in creating an impact just by a character narrating their flashback instead of showing them — Narain’s backstory, the descriptive nature of it effectively creates that uneasiness to us as much to Fahadh. That scene was as intense as the interrogation scene between Nasser and Kamal in Kuruthipunal — “Dhairiyam na Ennanu theriyuma?”. But I wish Lokesh had done away with these dialogues echoing again in Fahadh’s mind at a later stage, to stress what he is going through when he meets a similar fate.
Needless again to say how great Fahadh as an actor is, I want to mention the favorite moments from his performance,
– when he is facing a guy eye to eye and slowly letting out an awkward smile at the marriage reception.
– the way he reacts by coughing and crunching when he gets to know his wife has been kidnapped.
– when he unassumingly locks the door of the car and kicks the driver while investigating.
Vijay Sethupathi’s introduction is like the screenplay giving birth to it’s favorite child — the way he rises out of the auto with blood stains. The man cooly flaunting his big belly and hefty figure could very well ask the actors who put up a show with their trimmed physique to fuck off. Cracker moments when he is sitting as a doctor and talking to the patients.
The usage of bolt robotic arm in the cinematography is bloody brilliant in making the action sequences look so real — especially the one right before the interval point is just superb.
The acting department scores fully in this movie overall. Hardly anyone was wasted. And that factor pretty much helps the less exciting second half to a certain level. Creating a universe and all that was really a great idea. There were proper ports that Kaithi had kept open to which this movie connects it’s story. But that was also one of the contributing factors for the less exciting parts because at one point, the sensibilities of Kaithi universe was sucking everything about Vikram into it. I got tired of the heavy guns and machines. When Kaithi had that gattling gun sequence, it was so fresh and things before that added up so well to that moment. Here, it became like “I am going to show you more guns and more cooler stuff”. You see that difference between Jurassic Park and The Lost World? And the last action scene had me sitting like a headless person too, without any reaction. The very last stretch with Surya didn’t work for me. Karthi who was there but didn’t make an explicit appearance gave me a better impact — It’s that kind of a moment where a viewer badly wants to have at least a glimpse of a character but the magic is retained only till they don’t show the character.
The moments that were effective in the second half,
– The Agent Tina scene. And the precursor to her arc is well established in the much initial portion of the when she catches a cup that Fahadh drops. The transformation scene of hers was total badass, much like the Viswaroopam transformation scene.
– The moment that Santhana Bharathi and Kamal share during the last fight sequence. Santhana Bharathi trying to booze at that point took me back to Micheal Madhana Kamarajan.
– I loved how the guns were named after Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris etc.
– It was simply superb to even see Kamal in moments like tasting the baby formula out of the feeding bottle.
They say that it is good to have effective ending portions in a movie as you really carry them back once you are out of the theater. And as much as this was a pretty good movie, I wanted the final proceedings to leave me in awe which it didn’t. In a way Lokesh’s Vikram starring Kamal ended up like Pettai, a hardcore fan tribute to Rajini. But even as fan tribute moments, only some of them came closer to what Karka Karka from Vettaiyadu Vilayadu did to me — that is blending the actor and character at those moments in an organic way.
In the first half when Fahadh tries to understand more about Kamal’s character from the prostitute, it is almost like a fan of Velu Nayakan trying to trace and getting to know about him through Neela from that red light area. The investigation scenes are like one Munna Bhai going on a Mahatma Gandhi trail. For me, sequences like these work as better fan tribute moments than one explicitly placed “Neenga Nallavara Kettavaraaa!” dialogue in another scene that was like a facepalm.
Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vikram is a movie that’s totally worth watching in the theater, but I feel it could have been much more. The collaboration between the most amazing actors and a promising filmmaker — this team, had that potential to consolidate and make a real masterpiece out of this outing, despite being an action entertainer.
Cinema Paradesio 