Aayan starts off on a high note. Right from the first scene you are taken on a roller coaster ride into the world of illegal trafficking of diamonds and pirated videos of yet to be released “Thalaivar” movies – a Dummy’s guide on money laundering, war trodden Africa and impossible and illogical stunts. The drama is so high voltage that you don’t even remember the cardinal rule of South Indian Cinema. Every movie has a heroine and six ill-placed songs.
Ideally speaking this movie doesn’t need songs. It doesn’t even need Tamannaah – double “a” “h” or not! However, judging by the response in the multiplex every time Ms T set the screen on fire, I can’t really blame the producers. After all this is all show business and they got to make money.
Sadly the same cannot be said about the other cardinal rule, the Six Songs Syndrome – which in this case has clearly tested the viewer’s patience and provided quite a few loo breaks for our perusal. I am not a great fan of song-less cinema and if you have Ms T with a body to kill for, you are well within your right to ogle at her and songs do provide a medium for that. However, it is important that the songs are conceptualized and inserted in the screenplay so that they don’t miss the context. This movie needs three songs. The remaining are absolutely unnecessary and act as power brakes to an otherwise interesting narration.
There is not much of suspense element in the story. Right from the first scene you know who is who and who will turn out to be who. The screenplay has so many holes that it is a futile exercise to even consider the remote plausibility of what is happening on the screen. Everyone is a caricature and has only one psychological trait – Either sugar sweet good or unbelievably bad. There is no middle ground at all. The only exception to this rule is the leading man’s right hand. He comes across as a real person and behaves like one.
A few years ago, when I started reviewing movies – I concentrated more on logicality of the screenplay and technical finesse of the production. However, over the years I have realized that Cinema is essentially an escapist medium and that it need not conform to the real life. People watch movies to get out of their daily grind. While some movies show the same exact daily grind in an interesting manner, the others thrive on the dreams of the average person. So when Mambo Number Five, who is an African diamond supplier, doesn’t use guns but lets his finest five thugs in a ten minute lengthy brawl with Suriya, with Suriya winning the burly brawl without upsetting his curly hairdo, you stare at the macho man incredulously and the idea of building a temple for Suriya in Tamil Nadu has already crossed your mind.
The film ends, as expected. The narration is strictly linear but the titles do talk about a “Non Linear Editor”. In fact I was all excited that I would be witnessing a Yuva or a Pulp Fiction. Sadly, this term is used to explain the visual effects that precede an in-place-quick-recap incident.
Ayan works because of the energy exuberated by the leading man Suriya, the sensuous Tamannaah, the surprisingly underplayed Prabhu in what can easily be one of his finest performances and last but not least – Mambo Number Five and his African den!
