Jana Nayak: Vijay’s Whammy Of A Swan Song

Is Vijay really retiring from movie acting (and I say that deliberately, as acting on the Parliamentary floor is a different ballgame altogether)? Nah. Can’t be! He is so in form here, and the chap is truly having fun with the larger-than-life proclivities of a part that is constructed as a pre-emptive projection of the star as the man of the masses. Vijay is in terrific form as Thalapathy Vetri Kondan, a feral forerunner to his Chief Ministership.

Although the film was meant to be released before his CM’s career began, there are unmistakable templates, stormy and deliberate, to indicate that Vijay is up for the Chair. Yup, the man is in-charge even when the plot goes South, if you will pardon the pun. The actor gives his all to a sharply cut tailormade part where the Man of the Masses rises to the occasion repeatedly in an uninterr up ted torrent of self-referential heroics. However to look at Jana Nayak as simply celluloid hagiography is doing injustice to a film that is all about justice for the masses.

Advertisement

Not all the heroic glorification fits in. But none of it is the least apologetic about its intentions. Some of the electoral battle-cry is designed so blatantly to project Vijay as the prolific messiah that it becomes hard not to giggle in polite acquiescence. I was specially kicked by this one episode where Thelapathy (Vetri to friends, I guess) takes his daughter Viji (Mamatha Vaiju) to an army training centre, where the boxing trainer gives the worst possible performance of a misogynist.

Vijay fixes him with his cold stare and trenchant rebuke. But that’s not the real issue here. Suddenly in the middle of this pointedly anti-sexist sequence, a little girl appears. She has been abused. What is she doing there? It is time for the hero to lecture the crowd on ‘good touch bad touch’ with details on which part of the anatomy is hands-off. None of this unapologetic lionization is the least offensive. The purpose of the project is never hidden from our view. Writer-director H Vinoth tells it like it is. His is writing which is full of feisty flourishes, bomb blasts (clumsily staged, but who cares) and ther manmade atrocities are only a part of the game plan to bring the hero in at just the right moment for the audience to experience a collective emotional orgasm.

Vijay is a self aware presence. He knows where to push, and how far, and when to stop. Sometimes in the middle of the calibrated mayhem he stops to give one of those Vijay looks that his audience recognizes. Luckily for the script, he has a worthy opponent in Bobby Deol who plays a rogue cop wired to destroy the world. Didn’t he play something similar in Alpha recently? Bobby is at the risk of burn-out. He doesn’t have the native charm and the ingrained where withal of Vijay to do the same thing differently in each film. Deol’s character named, don’t laugh, Himler is specially awkward going through a yin and yang dual with his twin where he seems to be crying for direction.

Prakash Raj plays a rogue politician for the umpteenth time. How does he do it without falling asleep? Although some of his character’s more heinous confessions of wrongdoing are muted, his malignity is so Tamil Cinema it feels like self-mockery (which it isn’t). The female characters except Mamitha Baiju in the father-daughter plot, come and go. Barring Raichal Rabecca Philip who makes a strong impact midway as woman protesting on the streets (rings a bell?), they are there for the same reason that the Himalaya exists: so that Edmund Hillary could one day scale it. Vijay’s presence rationalizes the rush-hour traffic of characters. But only till a point. In the end Vijay is shown combating with robots. They look artificial to the core. But Vijay is on top of it. Always.

(THE REVIEWER IS A VETERAN FILM CRITIC. VIEWS EX- PRESSED ARE PER- SONAL)