Raavanan

I am a huge fan of Mani Ratnam and a review on Raavanan was inevitable from me. I somehow managed to get tickets of the movie for the second day and I went on top of a food poison and fever, only to be disappointed. The movie though had few stuff to be appreciated like cinematography, music and the hard work put in by the artists.

To say the least, cinematography was mesmerizing and it would take a while before anyone could match those visuals. The music has been topping the charts without any surprise, but the way the songs were handled in the movie was really pathetic. "Usurae poguthey Usurae Poguthey" an emotional song came in just like that when there was nothing emotional in the scene. I was bloody disappointed with that and I should say I never recovered from it at all till date. I hated the dialogues in between the song, I wonder why the director would want to choose such a place for the leads to interact when ARR does what he does the best. It would have been perfect had he placed the song where vikram tries to propose (kind of) Aishwarya."Kaattu Sirukki" was completely wasted and all I could do was, have pity on A.R.Rahman. May be he should continue touring western countries as he has been doing these days instead of composing for someone who is going to waste the song.

It would be impossible to find any flaws when it comes to the performance of each and every character, right from the leads to the supporting characters and even ones who has very little scenes like veeras's brother have done a fabulous job. The stunt director should have stayed with the crew throughout the shoot for they had taken such risky shots all through the movie. The locations where excellent and I wonder how Mani managed to convince his stars to shoot in those beautifully dangerous places. May be his reputation helps him here.... :) I am sure at some point of time in the movie people would be confused as to whom Mani is trying to depict as hero, Veera or Dev, but I would say he has just shown us the reality that every individual has grey shades in them. I really liked this attempt of Mani in the movie.

For people wondering how this movie could be bad when most things are good in it, here comes the reason, the major elements for any movie to me is story and screenplay. The movie claimed to be an adaptation of the great epic Ramayanam has a weak story line and the screenplay doesn't help it recover either. One could easily predict what’s next and the movie is short of any twists or turns except for the last 10 minutes which is again little predictable. It was nice that Aishwarya didn’t end up with Veera and I also liked the way Mani left the movie there instead of her getting together with Dev either. He doesn’t deserve to get her back for sure. The end was perfect and couldn’t have been better. But at the end all I could do was awe at the way everyone has given their heart and soul into the movie and not at the movie itself and that has lead to the failure of the movie. The pity is that all these hard work has gone for nothing because of a weak story line and an ordinary screenplay. A few might end with awards thought for their individual brilliance but none of that could save the movie from going to grave in the first couple of weeks of its release. This coming from an ace director like Mani is a huge disappointment not only to me but also to the most ardent fans of the director.