Director; Lokesh Kanagaraj
No movie is perfect when looked through a magnifying lens. As we sit in front of the screen, the mind fights with the film-maker to avoid suspending disbelief. The struggle settles the minute when there is something interesting/ unseen/ or fresh on the silver screen. With the audience in a trance, the filmmaker only has to keep supplying those 'spikes' at regular intervals.
Did this happen to me while watching Vikram? Unfortunately, no. It was an inconsistent film, IMO, that kept on breaking the invisible connection between my eyes and the screen. The film begins on a high with the signature step of Kamal. After the dishonest Vishwaroopam-2, it was gratifying to see Kamal enjoying on screen. When the film went into investigative mode, I sat up at the ingenious way the generic investigative procedural was flipped on its head as the past & present walked together. Soon enough the film shifted gear to an action thriller, which is when I started losing the connection to the screen.
The first action set-piece was a shootout between Amar [Fahad] & Masked gang followed by a chase. What was supposed to be a slugfest between the opposing party, ended as - who can shoot the maximum blanks without harming each other. The chase that ensued had one team in bikes and another in a minivan. But before anything interesting could happen on screen, one member of the masked gang got retired hurt. A few generic conversations later, it was time for another confrontation/ chase sequence at a wedding reception.
Before I get into the sequence, I would like to digress on the larger theme of 'ghost' & 'agents working in shadows' that the film was building up until this point. As a masked man threw a smoke can on the floor, I thought to myself, we have had enough 'tell', now it is time for the 'show'. I thought this was the moment that the ghost will swoop through the swarm of rowdies and before anyone could realise, disappear into the thin air, taking the award price with him.
On the contrary, the 'show' that was planned for us is a Ghilli style - I have a knife on your valuable asset, so you have to sing to my tune. It's been two decades since we were exposed to that trick; the minimum expectation I have is that there should be some tweak to make it palatable. Instead, we have a local 'Pablo Escobar' who is aiming to capture 2 lakh crore of assets, and his only defence against 4 masked men are a dozen sets of knives that never get used and a blank face when the masked man drives past a gazillion of his men. The setting changes to another location, where again one guy is corned on all sides by rowdies & police but don't harm him. I am not questioning the logic; a hero becomes a mass hero only when he comes out of such impossible situations. However, like regular Tamil villains, each one of the assailants gets flung by the hero's punch. Fortunately though, after unmasking, visually the fight choreography was stunning. Still, the 'ghost vanishing in thin air' theme could have been employed visually to show how he escaped everyone. But then, this is not that kind of film and Lokesh is not that kind of filmmaker.
The exciting 'face reveal' moment was short-lived thanks to another generic fight/ jailbreak scene. Worldover, jailbreak sequences usually are about outsmarting the police or showing the brute force of the attackers. Lokesh opts for the latter. There was an interesting idea about the punch power measurement using an apple watch. But it wasn't fleshed out properly to show the brute force of Vikram [kamal]. Instead in regular Tamil film style, policemen form a queue to be flung by the hero. There was a half-hearted attempt to bring guns into the mix, but visually that too wasn't interesting or challenging for the Vikram team. The sequence also had a dark humour/ irreverence layer, by lacing an iconic [& underrated] masala song over the fight scene. While the idea sounds great on paper, it didn't match up to the heft of the 'Jumbalaka' song sequence in Kaithi [Lokesh's previous venture]. In the latter, the song had a purpose in the story, while here it is to show that Vikram is having some fun while going into a battle. Nothing wrong with that. But when the cake [fight] is not tasty, the icing [song] doesn't make much of a difference.
There was another chance to make the dark humour work through the 'Kalviya Selvama veerama' song sequence. But honestly, I couldn't grasp the play; neither the lyrics nor the song situation in the original movie, lend weight to the scene here. Nevertheless, it was still effective in adding a new dimension to the scene to make it a gripping sequence. This positive momentum then kept on building and reached its crescendo during the 'Tina' sequence. This was probably the best sequence in the whole film for me. The beauty of this sequence is not just in the present, but in how the film laid a lot of breadcrumbs from the beginning.
With that high, I felt a sigh of relief hoping the last stretch of the film will either be gripping or be a mad blood-soaked adrenaline rush; but the silent fight sequence dashed that hope. In fairness, the fight was adequate as like the other fights. But it didn't raise above the normal hand-to-hand combat fight that we see in every other movie. This is where I would like to digress to the overarching problem I have with the film. The fight sequence, IMO, didn't have the zing to differentiate it from any other star vehicle we see on the screen. How would it have been if each action block of Vikram establishes one facet of the notorious spy; one on his intelligence; one on his gargantuan strength; one on his tech savviness, etc. That would have been layer after layer of surprise for both the villains and the audience. Anyway, that is just my expectations. 8 crore people seem to be happy with different variations of the same hand-to-hand combat and uninspiring gun fights till now.
While I can come to terms with that difference in opinion, I am still not able to digest the play around the child. It was as if the writer has decided that the climax sequence should have a child surrounded by guns. Nothing wrong with that vision. But the hackneyed way it was arrived at was very bizarre. As I was watching the film, I was wondering why not use Tina's eyes to open the panic room; or if you want to be a U/A film without disturbing imagery, why not make her stand up and place the child in the panic room with his mother? This is yet another instance where I got separated from the film.
And the climax. OMG. Let's take a step back and rewind the film in our minds. The villain is the Indian Pablo Escobar who is aiming to be worth 2 lakh crore. The opposite side is the country's notorious spy with a team of 5 and their biggest advantage has been the usage of guns in all their encounters. The villain is also aware that the tracker is switched on to trap them. So, what is the genius plan of the villain? Bring knives to this fight. I guess among 8 crore people, I am the only one not buying this. After losing all but one family member, the villain soon realises his mistake and comes loaded with a tonne of guns. So, what was his motive & character arc again in the film?
Coming back to the climax, aside from the messy child episode, the M2 browning machine sequence was whistle-worthy on paper. Yes, on paper the scene is about the larger-than-life power of this ghost who has moved mountains a million times to make a mission work; in this case making the automatic switch work through his grit. But visually, the cue wasn't like how Baahubali single-handedly lifted the statue. An unarmed man walking in slow motion to the centre field of a gunfight; the automatic switch getting activated not when the machine was being dragged but only after it stood still diluted the visual and in turn Vikram's parakramam [gallantry]. Again, a competent scene that is one step short of meeting its great potential. But immediately after this, the film drops to stupidity level 10. Out of nowhere, Amar brings back the child into the battlefield that will be blown to smithereens any minute now. I hope India's premier spy agency doesn't function as how this film portrays them. If this was about the innate India masala/ commercial cinema treatment, why not go all out and have a play around the punch measuring watch? Why not show from the beginning that Vikram was underachieving his potential and this child was the key trigger to surpassing that physical limitation?
When I look back at the film as a whole, what made this a lesser film for me compared to the excellent Kaithi & great in parts Master, was that those films had a world in which amateurs/ outsiders can enter the world of small-timers & overpower them with brains & brawns. But the world of Vikram, as alleged in the film, is mammoth. Knives-wielding rowdies and 'let's wing it' spies can't claim to be the best of the best in their profession. The imagination needed more scale. Hopefully, Rolex & Vikram 3 don't fall into the same category.
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