Vidaamuyarchi Review: Ajith Kumar Takes A Lot Of Punches For The Film To Win
Vidaamuyarchi Review: Ajith Kumar's film is now in theatres but is it worth watching? Read our review here.
VidaamuyarchiU/A
Vidaamuyarchi opens with a long shot of Arjun (Ajith Kumar) casually walking out of his house in Azerbaijan, carrying a bag. He opens his car boot, which provides a chance for a mid-shot of the Tamil superstar. There is no slow-motion nor a close-up. Anirudh Ravichander doesn’t whip out his signature ‘mass’ background score. In fact, the music is almost non-existent. The whole sequence is conspicuously in a matter-of-fact tone, sending a message that Magizh Thirumeni and Ajith Kumar are vehemently steering away from the usual gimmicks of a Tamil superstar film.
Within a few minutes into the movie, it becomes certain that Vidaamuyarchi is a story-driven film in every sense of the word, where the superstar embraces a white-collar role that is too subtle for his fans. Every scene screams one thing: There will be no fan service here. And that will be a huge welcome for any Tamil cinema viewer, who has been bombarded with Rockies, Pushpas, Jailers, and Beasts. It is funny how Tamil filmmakers get a pat on the back for not doing the bad things, even if they aren’t doing anything great. That’s telling of the state of affairs.
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Vidaamuyarchi begins with Kayal (Trisha) coming clean about her affair to her husband Arjun. We get nuggets of their formative years of rosy time juxtaposed with the present, where the passion has wilted. There is a brilliant scene of Kayal revealing how Arjun has stopped noticing the degradation of their romance, which is a pleasant surprise. Every scene breathes and has a purpose. However, Magizh takes long and redundant scenes to establish this broken marriage, which could have been done away with in just that one scene. The film begins when the couple takes ‘one last trip’ before calling it quits, and they travel from Azerbaijan to Tbilisi through long stretches of desert. Except for this prologue, Vidaamuyarchi follows the story of the Hollywood film Breakdown (1997), where the hero saves his woman from the clutches of a notorious gang.
Vidaamuyarchi is largely engaging throughout despite the predictability, and the credit goes to Magizh Thirumeni, who is exceptional in his smooth expositions. One gets more intrigued about how the story is told than what is being told, as what of it is pretty straightforward. He doesn’t deviate much from all tropes of this genre film of survival. There is a ploy involved with twists that aren’t surprising but interesting. On top of everything, the action set pieces become the icing on the cake. There is one inside a moving car, that keeps one on the edge of the seat. The top camera angle of the fight sequence is the chef’s kiss. The same can be said about all the technical aspects of the film, which at times is, unfortunately, too clinical, making things a bit plastic.
Talking about Ajith Kumar’s vulnerability in Vidaamuyarchi, I was reminded of Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale, his first film as James Bond. The invincible James Bond was suddenly taking a lot of punches. His charming face got too many bruises. Similarly, Ajith Kumar, the poster boy of suave in Kollywood, gets battered in Vidaamuyarchi until the tail end of the film. In a bar scene, the desperate Arjun is pranked, and the whole bar turns him into a laughingstock. He walks with his face down. Guess, Ajith turned a bit masochistic. Or it could be said that he was sadistic. Taking too many punches, he was inflicting a lot of pain on his fans. The message is clear that the actor wants to break the mould of a superhero. Also, he doesn’t want to give what his fans want, rather he wants them to meet him halfway for what he has to offer.
Hence, he becomes a cog in the wheel of Vidaamuyarchi, where Arjun and Regina Cassandra take centre stage with their laudable performances. Regina Cassandra as Deepika and Arjun as Rakshith are the Harley and Joker of the Tamil. They even get an extended flashback about their origin. On the other hand, we don’t really get a lot from Arjun. While we know he is resilient, street smart, and vulnerable, his action side that pops out of nowhere is not given proper reasoning. Another interesting aspect of his characterisation is his self-righteousness. Despite being the victim of such brutality, Arjun doesn’t hit back with vengeance, which robs us of the cathartic release. He chooses to shoot the villains only in the kneecap. Like the righteous Batman, he drops no bodies. Even the deaths become accidental, leaving the halo of the hero intact. However, finally, there is a superstar who wants to walk and talk like a normal person, desires to do things by the books, be morally right and doesn’t want to get stuck in the feedback loop catering to what sells.
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