Aayirathil Oruvan - Review

While watching this big budget Selva Raghavan Pongal release, I got reminded of one particular scene in the movie Ayan where there is this director guy who comes around to Surya and asks him for suggestions on hollywood movies to watch in order to finalise the scene in his movie. For all the originality and crude reality that SR lends to his films, I felt that he went about like the director above after watching AO the other day. Frankly it was a big disappointment for all the hype surrounding it.

The scenes in the movie continually remind you of many adventure/fantasy/grail hunt movies we have watched over the years. The basic ingredient being a "metaphoric treasure" lost through the ages and the clue to whose whereabouts lies hidden in obscure coded manuscripts. This in itself does not lend to the accusation that I have made but going just beyond this most basic requirement you start to find resemblances to the movies like Lara Croft ( Father-daughter archaelogist pair), Alan Quartermain ( Expedition to find a missing loved one who has gone beyond the known realms and possibly found the treasure", Prophecy of a chosen one coming from out to deliver the masses from suffering ( Apocalypto, 10000 BC) , Mummies ( Seven dangers on the path-Seven plagues unleashed) and on and etc.

Given this kind of "borrowing" I atleast hoped that SR would give a strong script to make the movie engaging but there too it falls flat. The narration is a total drag on especially in the second half. The plot itself lacks credibility as the treasure in this case being a " Statue of the housegod of Pandyas" which was taken away by the Cholas. A whole line of descendants of the Pandyas whose life revolves around bringing back the statue stretches the already thin plot to the point of breaking.

But on the whole the movie, especially the first half, brings something new to the average tamil audience not in terms of some message or anything but in terms of showing the female lead in a different light. The dialogues that do not have the euphemesim, ambivalence and conservativeness traditionally associated with tamil movies draw lot of shouts from the audience. The scene in which the two female leads let out a string of expletives was kind of refreshing.

As a movie AO has tried to show the tamil audience something new but has ended up making them restless in the second half. A shorter and crisper version of the movie without so many holes in the plot would have been so much more enjoyable.