Bigger, better and stylized – that’s what we have been promised from Inkokkadu aka. Irumugan, this week’s biggest south India release. Directed by “Arima Nambi” fame Anand Shankar, this movie also stars Nayanthara and Nithya Menon as the female leads has hit the screens today. Let’s check out how it is…
Naatho chethulu kalipavu anuko… ee lokanike nuvu rajuvi nenu rani..
Story : Set in the busy city of Malaysia.
It is a cat and mouse chase from the start, Police officer Akhil (Vikram) and his faithful confrere Ayushi (Nithya Menen) are in hot pursuit of an international mastermind Love (Vikram), the one who plans attacks on Indian Embassy in Malaysia, Straight out of those good old thrillers, the thief in question Love is cuke cool Mafia maniac who uses everything from fancy gadgets, high concentrated chemicals to unique disguises to get his job done in style. He finds a partner in fellow Meera (Nayanthara) with whom he’s planning big drug deal, but the question is, can he trust her completely.
Analysis : Story of the film is quite rinky-dink, where a suspended officer is forced to work on a case, which is somewhat related his past life. The director Anand Shankar took various points to develop this thriller like a chip in the brain (from Hardwired 2009 film) the inhaler drug point (from Minority Report 2002 film); He even took the character styling of love inspiration from Fry Cry. But the director has gone into the finer details of the film while making it. The plot of the film even deals with ‘interesting drug’ and ‘memory loss’ which has given enough space to the writers to add in some great twists and keep you on edge of your seat. The film has even some interesting tracks like ‘Halena’ & ‘Chinni Gundello’ representing love angle in its script quite nicely.
However the bad news is that almost all the above promising features fail to deliver as a product and the film disappoints hugely hanging in between the genres of a thriller romance and a comedy quite amateurishly. It begins well establishing all its main characters but then goes on and on without adding anything substantial point in the narration following a thrill route. The first half has few enjoyable moments, which are quite few and a far between, but post interval all that becomes quite slow as well as monotonous and the film has nothing more to say till the dragged climax.
One thing I have to say for the movie – the cinematography is first-class. The places are shot beautifully. Music composer Harris Jayraj tries really hard to rise above the tempo with his innovative BGM and few fine tracks but without a specific direction, all that goes in vain and fails to make an strong impact. The stunt scenes look quite all right. Too bad that the director spent so much time on the style and the actors looks that he did not find time to actually write a story. The supposed twists are ultra meh and can be guessed from light years away. Whole sets of supporting characters disappear from the narration to appear again in the end. As I said before, logic is something which is totally left behind. Like, When a RAW agent wanna stay hidden from the eyesight of the bureau why the heck will he update his location every 15 days; When Akhilan comes to interrogate Karunakaran, she simply explains everything about Love and his secrets, than fighting hard on saving them; most frustrating point was Malaysian police providing Love the drug, when he was literally arrested for handling illegal drugs through inhaler. Production values of the film are very grand.
Performances : Vikram character Love is intelligent and debonnaire beyond belief – comparable to Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) or Simon Templar (Val Kilmer) or Joker (Heath Ledger) or Aryan (Hrithik) (though Simon Templar’s disguises were far better). His styling is similar to Pagan Min from Fry Cry. The more I see Vikram, the more I enjoy him, and this movie did it for me. The man can certainly live-in any character to the ‘T’ and he pulls off the psycho maniac image with as much aplomb as Pagan Min.
Vikram as Love ruled this movie much to the chagrin of Akhilan Vinod, whose role was completely overshadowed. Vikram definitely lacks the charisma of stiff heartthrob Akhilan but compensates by his immaculate acting and the hard work put in to create the lean Bourne on screen. The only thing that bothered me about his character and this is due to lack of story rather than acting ability, the movie even fails to produce any kind of motivation for Love’s chosen career path. There is no don’t Nayanthara is one hot lady with legs that any woman would die for. Though no one should be allowed to refer themselves in the third person and get away with it, I definitely felt something missing in the chemistry between Akhilan and Nayanthara. Nithya Menen is fine in her small character. Thambi Ramiah character manages to raise few laughs, even if the jokes tend to become a little too repetitive and you feel like he feels like he’s got way too much screen time than more important characters.
Verdict : To say it all, Inkokkadu had all the required ingredients to make an excitingly thriller for starving viewers. But the film is letdown by a commodious script, routine characters and its inability to deliver a solid entertainer.
Rating : 2/5
