Director
Suseenthiran [
Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu,
Naan Magan Alla] has a distinct tally of dealing in both countryside and urban centred stories and hones it, which is matchless. Notably, he is never game for stardom to entice box office; and that’s ability. This time around he sees to a U-Turn and gives his hero a go.
Rajapattai [
King’s Course] starts with
Anal Murugan [
Vikram], a Cinema fight boy, muscle man and an aspirant Villain, who shares roof with his film fellows including
Shanmugam [
Thambi Ramaiah] who is a wannabe film director. Murugan’s tryst with
Dhakshnamurthy aka
Dhakshna [
Director K Vishwanath], an erstwhile merchant, endears them at once and they become buddies. Dhaksha’s son
Chidambaram [
Avinash] tries to pocket an orphanage property from him much against his will. In comes
Ranganayagi or
Akka [
Sana] who is a minister in power; grabes properties of natives above suspicion, for her political benefits. She is supported by rowdies of
Vappa [Pradeep Rawat]. No price for guessing rest of the story.
Now, several ideas in the movie seem to have clean references of earlier blockbusters in Tamil cinema. While land grabbing played a subject in
Singam, Persona of Vikram as
Anal Murugan is very similar to that of
Kamalhassan in
Pammal K Sambandham, not to forget the Sivaji-Vijay starrer
Once More in which a similar bond between the male leads was showed. Its not only tough to see Vikram do a regular Romeo-types, he also looks older for a coward lover.
5 time national award winning director K Vishwanath as
Dhakshna steals the show by leading the lighter portions during the first half. Sana as Ranganayagi lets her powerful eyes express the umbrage but her clichéd role has very little substance.
The string between satire and humour and intelligence is not as thinner as Suseenthiran imagines it to be and his engagement of the so-called sharp and subtle phrases by Vikram, the fuzzily choreographed stunt sequence in the Temple scene, and those Vikram-Vishwanath-Ramaiah talks, steer the ‘Mo’ word in the balcony every now and then. A national award winner [
Thambi Ramaiah] is a bad call for the role.
Once again Tamil Cinema uses the female lead, here, Dhiksha Seth [debu], only for songs and a concluding kidnap; and only here can we witness someone being snatched off; but benignly allowed mobile phone in pocket. The entire hostage drama, intended to be clever, ended being ridiculous. We can only remember the much sharper
Dhil and
Dhool of Vikram and how they convinced us. The 45-year-old actor gets a sprint in the movie as he gets to don multiple looks, but many of them are mere make-overs and not roles.
Yuvan and
Yugabarathy get our pity as their decent work in an ordinary script sound nuisance. Lest, the disco number “
Villathi Villangal…” [Malathi and Mano] is the pick among the 4 songs and melody could have been avoided in the fore. By the time “
Ladu ladu….” stars with the credits, the hall gets empty.
The amount of details put into Vikram’s miniature make-overs, stylish good looks and trendy outfits could have been done with the script as well. With good screenplay, the movie could have been an all time comedy of Vikram’s Filmography. The movie is baby honour to the much-exploited gym boys in Tamil Cinema. The stunts often seen in the air, with sounds of bone cracking makes it all the more irksome. In
Rajapattai, many of them manage to rouse chuckles with their hairdos and cowardice. They will survive as long as nutty heroes dominate Kollywood.
Only clear sense of humour and not mere references could have put a good show for
Rajapattai.
