Well, I am back. Life has been so busy that I haven’t had the time to pen (I mean type) my thoughts. Let me say that every time I decide to blog, I draw a blank on the subject that I want to blog on. I know there are lots of topics, but for some reason, I always draw a blank.
Having said that, I thought I will blog about the “Movie of the Year” in the Indian Movie Industry – Endhiran- The Robot. I was thinking of watching this movie once the DVD or Blu-ray got released, but the hype around it and the way my friends talked about it, I thought I will give it a shot. As usual, my husband was least interested and I had to drag him to the theatre to watch this movie. We were 20 minutes late, but realized that we didn’t miss much. In fact, my brother-in-law’s comment on my going late was that I missed the best part of the movie (the first 20 minutes:-o!!!!)
By now, everyone would have read like zillion versions/reviews of this movie in the web. So, I am not going review this movie. What I want to ask, basically, is this: Is Bigger better? Do you really think that Endhiran is a landmark movie in Indian Cinema?
I realize that this movie is supposed to be the land-mark movie in terms of special effects/technology usage in Indian movie making, but does it mean that this movie is one of the better movies that get released in the Indian market and in the international market?
I found nothing innovative in the storyline. There were absurd scenes in the second half that made me wonder what had happened to Shankar, the director of the movie. To me, this is one of Shankar’s mediocre movies and we all know most of Shankar’s movies have tight screenplay and wonderful storyline. The only other Shankar movie I wasn’t impressed with was “Boys” and I am sure it’s on everybody’s list. And not to say the least, the special effects were not definitely “Hollywood Standard”. Some scenes stood out and kudos to Shankar for that, but on the whole, this was just another love triangle with stitched special effects that didn’t fit into the canvas drawn by Shankar.
The only thing that kept this movie together was Superstar’s performance, charisma and screen presence. If this movie didn’t have Rajni, it would have flopped. Period. If anyone thinks otherwise, let’s have a debate. My, what a screen presence!
I appreciate the effort put in by the team to make this movie and I know it’s easy to criticize and difficult to innovate, but if we need to gain international market, we need to do far better than “Endhiran”. We still have only 2 genre in our Indian Cinema – “Masala Action” and “Love”. With just these 2 genre, Indian Cinema will never be able to compete with World Cinema, no matter how tech savvy the Indian Cinema becomes.
Endhiran is not a sci-fi film. It falls into the former category I mentioned above. Endhiran is also a good example of why bigger is not always better.I just wish Shankar had put in some thoughts to the screenplay and brought in some innovations to the story. Instead, he spent in on special effects that just didn’t make sense. Endhiran is just another attempt to move Indian Cinema in the right direction. My guess is that we need to wait for quite some time to see the “landmark” movie that changes the landscape of Indian Cinema.
"The only thing that kept this movie together was Superstar’s performance, charisma and screen presence. If this movie didn’t have Rajni, it would have flopped. Period." - totally agree on this.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I believe Shankar actually did a good job in this movie, not in the direction you're expecting, but making it a superhit and understanding the Indian mass crowd. If this movie was a complete sci-fi, it would've been lost in the majority of the crowd.
Prathi, I completely agree. I think Shankar's greatest strength is his connection to his viewers. That's why all his movies have been hits.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I felt that he somehow lost that connection in the second half of the movie. I loved the fact that this was not a copy of some B grade hollywood movie, but still, throwing logic out of the window is something that Shankar is very careful about. I thought that Sivaji was better executed...
Personally, Indian is my all time fav movie of Shankar's.
Indian is wonderfully executed, if only Shankar had access to the special effects crew, it would've been fantastic (cardboard helicopters kind of ruined it for me)
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, what about the mosquito sequence in Endhiran, with Rajni and the special effects it should've been kept out of the movie
Yes. Indian was a complex script and he handled it beautifully. I just wish that we don't chase hollywood tails because we don't have the infrastructure to get there. Let's be original in story telling first.
ReplyDeleteDon't even go there abt the mosquito scene or the final scenes (car chase where not even one bullet hits Aishwarya)!!! I felt like i was watching a Balakrishna movie (no offensive B's fans)