A movie review by Balaji Balasubramaniam
| Cast: | Prabhu Deva, Nagma, S.P.Balasubramaniam, Girish Karnad, Raghuvaran, Vadivelu, Manorama |
| Music: | A.R.Rehman |
| Direction: | Shankar |
Prabhu(Prabhu Deva), the son of a police constable(S.P.Balasubramaniam), is smitten by Sruthi(Nagma), the daughter of Kakkarlal Satyanarayana(Girish Karnad), the governor of TamilNadu. After the usual sparring, she falls for him too. Satyanarayana has his own agenda to destabilise and then topple the government. Towards this end, he uses the services of Mallikarjun(Raghuvaran) to engineer bomb blasts at high-profile spots in the city. When he learns of his daughter's romance, he is firmly opposed to it and orders the police to arrest and torture Prabhu while sending his daughter away to his house in Andhra Pradesh. But once Prabhu is released, he promptly lands up there. Since Satyanarayana has been hiding Mallikarjun in the same house, Prabhu stumbles upon the dastardly plan.
As usual, Shankar moves things at breakneck speed, never letting us pause to catch our breath even during the romance. The romance follows the usual pattern of the hero falling in love at first sight but then earning the ire of the heroine before she finally falls in love with him too. Given the well-known dancing abilities of Prabhu Deva, the love story is framed against the background of dance. So Nagma attends a dance class and Prabhu Deva tries to attract her attention with Pettai Rap and once he comes to his senses, with a bharathanatyam performance. The scenes where Prabhu Deva and Nagma run away has lots of charming moments in the different ways he takes care of her needs.
Shankar has always mounts his movies on a large scale and with Kunjumon as the producer here, the abundance of money is evident in many places. The explosions and chases are impressive and the song sequences are rich. The climax, which involves a huge number of people, is handled well and the confusion and chaos are portrayed convincingly.
There is an overdose of violence and gross-out moments during the portions where Prabhu Deva is arrested by the police. The policewoman at the station proves that women are no less to men when it comes to torture, by employing some brutal methods of inflicting pain. The scenes are way too violent for a predominantly commercial film. But the actress deserves mention for an audacious performance though. While these sequences stop with being violent, the scenes where Prabhu Deva is fed and Nagma feeds herself are plain gross.
As in all of Shankar's features so far, the songs are superb and made even more memorable by the picturisation of the sequences. Mukkaalaa Mukkablaa... is the standout with its innovative use of sets and costumes with a western theme, Prabhu Deva's dancing and special effects, especially during the final body-less dance of his clothes. Prabhu Deva's dancing talents are on full show in Oorvasi Oorvasi..., which contains some really fun lyrics about the things for which we are supposed to adopt a "take it easy policy. Ennavale... is beautifully rendered by Unnikrishnan. Pettai Rap... is hard on the ears but the antics of Prabhu Deva and Vadivelu make it fun to watch anyway.
Prabhu Deva is impressive in his first full-fledged hero role (not considering the poorly-received Indu). Apart from dancing, he fights well too and shows a flair for comedy in his very first scene. Nagma is adequate in her debut. Girish Karnad makes a surprisingly effective villain and he manages to be quite chilling, especially when talking about performing last rites for the victims. Raghuvaran is impressive as usual. The confrontation between them, when they talk about trapping each other, is a memorable scene. SPB plays a different kind of a father. He is more a friend to his son, advising him to pursue his lover seriously and offering drinks to him to make him forget his sorrow. He impresses when he cries after unknowingly thrashing his own son in the police station.
