Thaandavam - "Bourne made by Vikraman" : )

Ok. The headline may say it all, when I got the tickets for the movie from my brother he said "this is a Jason Bourne movie made by Vikraman of Pudhu Vasantham fame". As I left the theatre I realized he was on target.

There may be enough reviews going around on the movie so I will stick to a few observations:

The positives:

- An interesting plot that had promise (not worked out the inspirations as yet)

- An actor who tries to do the best in every role he gets, and who had enough experience playing a blind man

-London makes the movie rise above the ordinary

- A host of talented performers on the pay, in no particular order Nasser, Anushka, Saranya, Santhanam, Shayaji Shinde, Thambi Ramaiah, MS Bhaskar and I still may have missed a few

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The negatives:

- A plot with promise but holes like a sieve, there were too many inconsistencies and too many predictable scenes that the thrill of a spy movie was lost

- Silly writing and lines like the heroine an 'eye specialist' is oblivious to the employment status of her husband and repeatedly calling him an SI is plain silly. Still not sure if Anushka was meant to be playing a dumb blonde in the movie.

- The entry of Nasser as a SriLankan origin thinking cop had so much promise and ends up as a poor caricature. Hollywood, Bollywood, Kollywood whatever it may be, the police will wait at the climax to enter only after the last fight despite being outside the door.

- Amy Jackson, Anushka and Lakshmi Rai are pretty and that is about it. Having seen Anushka in other movies this was a tragedy and the romance or lack of it or whatever emotion the director tried to show is still a mystery. And the fact that she towers over Vikram is absolutely silly casting.

- Vikram is a good actor, and he has done a great job but he looks so old that close ups shots could be completely avoided or CG could have been used more instead of the silly bomb blast clips.

- I know London is a positive, but the question is why London, maybe because the KGB did not seem as interesting as MI6?

- The music by GV Prakash is just about there and that one song that he has sung sounds familiar

- Too many good and not so good actors wasted because simply there was no role for them

- By now even a kid will know that the bad guy is the friend and every one in the theatre would have figured it out in a matter of minutes so time directors find someone different to be the villain, maybe the gardener, dhobi etc

- And people a flowchart to make a super weapon??!!!! I was absolutley rolling over the flowchart bit. Grow up people.

In case you missed the plot here it is:

A couple of murders in London and a cab is always athe crime scene. A blind organist of a church is a suspect. The suspect is a RAW agent who came on an undercover to recover a flowchart is sold down the Thames river literally by his friend. He loses his wife, who is yet to become his wife (watch and understand that bit) and his eyes in a bomb blast which proved that the flow chart worked. He then teams up with the wife of another slain agent to take revenge using echolocation (use wiki for that).

Bottomline – Go for a interesting attempt but minus any expectations and remember the opening line before you buy the tickets.