For the first time in life, I watched a film within the first week of its release. Given the state of films these days, I am actually thankful that this one was worth my time and money. Now, where do I start? If I must summarize this film in one sentence, it is total value for money. It tells the story it wants to fairly well, has no pretensions of being an intellectual film (which suits me just fine) and entertains you for the 2.5 hours it runs. Like every other film ever made anywhere, it has its share of ups and downs. So, here we go!

Storyboard

Despite the disclaimer in the beginning of the film, it is the story of Silk Smitha, the wildly-popular item girl of the 80s. The director stays faithful to reality, while still taking some liberties with the details. Even our heroine is called Silk. For those familiar with the film industry scene of the 80s, the characters are familiar. The film doesn’t make any claims of making you think, and stays a true commercial film. Personally, I see nothing wrong with that.

Screenplay

Several loose ends. Why did the mother shut the door in Silk’s face? What transpired between the day she left home and the day she came back? What relationship did she share with her mother before she ran away from home? The mother is seen quietly weeping at Silk’s funeral without any conflicting emotions. The mother’s character lacks the depth that would have contributed greatly to the story.

The director could have devoted more time to exploring the complex relationship between the director and Silk, rather than wasting time on a rather one-dimensional love affair with the superstar’s brother that seems to serves no purpose other than enrage the superstar. Even the character of Ramakant as the superstar’s writer-brother seems to lack depth. A little bit of attention to the men in Silk’s life would have elevated the film to a level higher than just entertaining.

Whose idea was it to include that hilarious dream song between the director and Silk? It is completely pointless to include a song at that point and trimming away the excess would have made a good film better.

Music

Acquiring the rights to the Tamil song “Nakka Mukka” makes all the difference to the soundtrack. From the very beginning, the song sets the mood for the story. Every song takes you back to the 80s when films were garish and loud. On the whole, for a movie set in the 80s, the music was apt.

Acting

This is Vidya Balan’s film through and through. She carries the film on her shoulders with a performance that is nothing short of outstanding. There is plenty of cleavage, plenty of intimate scenes and plenty of swear words. But somehow, you never feel any of it is vulgar. Maybe, as other reviewers have suggested, it is because she gives herself so completely to the role that it seems natural rather than pretentious or vulgar. Despite prancing around in short skirts and cleavage-revealing tops, Vidya Balan manages to look sexy rather than vulgar. The way her appearance changes over the course of the film is testimony to the amount of work she has put into this role. Personally, she is the last person I would have expected to carry off a role like this. But, true to her style, she comes up trumps.

Once again, Naseerudeen Shah reminds you exactly why he is a veteran actor. He suitably downplays his role to give Vidya Balan her space but still matches her performance in every scene they have together. The aging superstar look, the pencil-thin moustache, the attitude, the behavior, all are perfect. Someone tell me why we don’t see more of him in movies? I was surprised to notice that Emraan Hashmi can actually act. And Tusshar Kapoor as well.  Maybe it’s true that a good actor is made by the director in whose hands he puts himself. With all-round good performances by everyone the acting is well above average.

The little things

Of course there are little things that rankle. Like the fact that the characters speak impeccable Hindi in a tiny Chennai potti-kadai. But this is a Hindi movie, so what did you expect? Also, the character of Nayla as the journalist is woefully underdeveloped. I kept expecting some sort of friendship/camaraderie to develop between Silk and Nayla and it never happened.  She merely reports what we already know. We get the feeling that we did not really need that character. Just a bunch of magazine clippings with gossip stories or scathing criticism would do.

The final verdict

Must watch. Once in a theatre, and repeat watches on DVD. Just try buying the originals and not the pirated version. This film deserves that!

I watched 7am Arivu last night. My evening started off on a rather annoying note with the massive queue at Fame Cinemas. I think it sort of set the tone for things to come. Before I talk of the movie, let me declare that this is the very last time I am watching a movie at a theatre other than Sathyam in Chennai.

Fame has a crazy, and incredibly inefficient system. Like Sathyam, they let you book tickets online, which to their credit is a relatively hassle-free process. When you make a credit card purchase online, they allow you to print a booking confirmation with a booking id. You then need to take it to the theatre and collect your real ticket at the counter. At Fame National in Chennai, there is only one counter dedicated to Internet bookings. Yesterday, there were approximately 50 people in the queue for the movie when we arrived there at 9.40, a good 10 minutes before the show time. It took roughly 15 minutes for me to get my ticket, and I effectively missed a good 10 minutes of the film by the time I was in my seat. Why they cannot allow us to print our tickets as well is beyond my comprehension.This would just allow people who get e-tickets to go ahead without waiting, and make life a lot easier for everyone.

Ok…now that my rant about the stupid booking system is done with, on to the movie itself. 7am Arivu has a great concept, a decent story and an actor who can deliver. Yet, it fails on many counts. Let me take it on one by one.

Concept and storyboard

The concept is great. The idea of our own skills being used against us, of control through hypnotism, of genetic memory and genetic engineering…it’s all very nice. The storyboard is quite decent and sticks to its basic premise that the DNA holds the key to everything that we are, and what we are capable of doing. So far, so good.

Screenplay and direction

Terribly inconsistent screenplay, careless editing, and sometimes illogical happenings spoil it for us at the very first instance. Shruti Hasan is a PhD student in Genetic Engineering. Her best friend from school is a 3rd year Civil Engineering student? Why? Did she fail several times before she passed 10th std? Or does the director want us to believe that a 20-year old undergraduate student is capable of such advanced research? And what’s wrong with the heroine nearing 30 anyway? Another instance is when Surya and Shruti break into the professor’s house and Shruti starts up the professor’s computer. The director makes it look ridiculously easy to steal data from someone’s computer. A scientist doing DNA research and using an iMac doesn’t know how to password-protect his system? And is stupid enough to allow Chrome to same his passwords and not set a master password, especially when he has just received a confirmation of an account transfer of 300 crores rupees to his Swiss bank account? Give me a break!

And, why is the first part of the movie so incredibly boring and long? Why bring in Shruti Hasan as a love interest-cum-researcher, when the love story is not developed anyway? And why do have to insert songs at random intervals just for the sake of it? I wished I could hit the fast forward button sometimes. Just get on with the story guys!

Acting

Surya is his usual good-looking self. He delivers to the best of his abilities. Much as I like Surya, I must admit his histrionic abilities have their limitations. And this limit is good enough for 7am Arivu. On the whole, he is as good as he can be. But Shruti Hasan is a whole different matter. So much for genetic memory! Shruti doesn’t seem to have inherited even 1% of her father’s ability to either act or speak Tamil. At times, her American-accented Tamil gets too much to take. Her lecture on Tamil and it’s greatness, in that godawful accent of hers in the project presentation scene might have been laugh-worthy had the accent not been so jarring!

And finally!

The whole movie gets too preachy about the merits of traditional Indian knowledge at times. Reminding people of our past greatness is all ok, as long as we don’t forget where we are today, and what we need to do for a better future. Sometimes, we feel like the whole movie rides on past greatness, and not on anything present.

On the whole, amidst the lectures on the merits of vaasal theichufying and kolam pottufying, the director seems to forget his more fundamental task: making a film that is worth watching. My final verdict: it’s good enough to watch once, and bad enough to not want to see it ever again, even on TV.

There are some movies that you watch with enormous expectations. Some of these bowl you over with the sheer beauty of the filmmaking. Others leave you feeling shortchanged. And yet others make you happy, but make you wonder what that little missing component is, that will make a good film perfect. Payanam falls into the third category. The combination of Radha Mohan and Prakash Raj was enough to draw me to the film. Their earlier venture was quite satisfying and I expected to see a well-made film. And they do not disappoint. However, there are those nagging little details that differentiate the good from the great.

The screenplay is tailored to perfection. The pacing of the narrative, the style, the use of humour in the most tense situation, the sheer tightness of the script…all these and more keep you on the edge of your seat. Not once until intermission are you compelled to check your watch to see when you can get your popcorn. The narrative ensures that no further entertainment is needed. In all such dramas, the depth of the characters are normally open to question because of the sheer numbers of people that you are compelled to handle. When your story requires you to centre the narrative around more than a hundred passengers confined to an aircraft, there is plenty of scope for mistakes. This is especially true in the case of hijack dramas with big stars where the action needs to centre around them. Payanam steers clear of that danger (and of succumbing to commercial needs and inserting an item number in the climax) by choosing to use lesser-known, but highly talented actors in place of big-name stars. Each of the characters is etched with a decent level of detail. As a result, the middle-aged couple on the way to see their son, the young woman leaving her husband for good, the priest, the Pakistani family returning to Karachi after their child’s heart surgery; each of these characters become real people and not merely victims in a hijack waiting to be saved by a hero. And this approach, despite the presence of a star like Nagarjuna is refreshing.

The soundtrack is unobtrusive and conveys the tension in just the right measure. No exaggeration. The smaller characters, although garnering much less screen time, are as important to the main plot as the protagonists. Indeed, at one point you realize there are no protagonists really. Just a bunch of people who are trying to do their best to save a hundred passengers from a fate worse than death. Nobody is more important than the other. But nobody is less important either. The camera work and editing reminded me strongly of Unnaipol Oruvan. Slick editing, and ruthless trimming away of non-essentials have done a great deal to enhance the already tight scripting.

One thing about Payanam that appealed to me personally was the use of humour to ease the tension on screen. Wit, sarcasm and dry humour were the hallmark of Payanam and for me, that worked big-time. I have never been a big fan of Vadivel-type slapsticky humour and this is precisely what Payanam diligently avoided. Kudos to the team for that! Me, being the die-hard Kamal fan seem to compare every non-Kamal film I see with something Kamal may have produced from his stables. This is especially true in the case of my taste for humour. It is perhaps a tribute to the few Indian directors who still swear by satire and sarcasm as a weapon for criticism, that the filmmakers have chosen to employ humour even in the most critical situations in the film.

On the whole, Payanam is a satisfying film. That said, the little things sometimes irk. Like why is Yusuf Khan reading The Hindu in a scene that is supposed to be taking place somewhere in Kashmir. Ok, he is really in Tirupathi, but a local Kashmiri newspaper may have been more convincing, in my opinion. I know this is probably nitpicking and that it is entirely irrelevant to the plot, but these are the little things that go into making a good film great. Also, after all that jihadist propoganda and talk of kafirs, why does one of the terrorists have to be Hindu? Why this obsessive need for political correctness?

The bottomline is, the film is definitely watchable. It is well-made, well-scripted, well-edited and well-structured. It is not one of those films you should watch between several breaks on a pirated DVD. Go to a theatre please! This is worth the effort.