I watched today in Devi theatre, Ajith Kumar’s Yennai Arindhaal (என்னை அறிந்தால்). This movie was hyped as Gautham Vasudev Menon’s third super-cop action movie. Gautham’s earlier two cop movies, Kaakha Kaakha (2003) starring Suriya and Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (2006) starring Kamal Haasan were superhits. While watching this recent movie of Gautham, you are unlikely to forget KK and VV, you are constantly reminded about them throughout.
The story starts in the sky, inside a flight from Boston to Chennai, where a pepper-salt hairdo sporting Ajith sitting next to lovely Anushka Shetty. For Anushka (as தென் மொழி) it was love at first sight. After landing, Ajith saves Anushka from bad guys. By this time we figure out he is a cop (kind of) and we wait for his flashback to start. Gautham doesn’t disappoint us, just like in Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu where Kamal’s flashback runs while he is sitting in a flight to USA (surprise), here Ajith recalls his past while sitting in a car driving in Chennai. Ajith’s past runs like in Vijayakanth starer Sathriyan (1990), a film that in my opinion set the trend for next two decades for cop genre in Kollywood. Coming back to present, Ajit fights out the bad guys and saves Anushka.Trisha Krishnan stars as Ajith’s first love interest, though she is one of the longest running heroines in Kollywood, aging seems to have no effect on her. Trisha is more gorgeous than ever in this film, it’s a treat to watch her. Trisha’s character as dancer Hemanika is a divorcee and single mother, which reminded me of Jyothika’s character in Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu. Arun Vijay, one of the talented actors in Tamil film industry who unfortunately hasn’t managed to get characters that deserve his potential, has scored a home run with this movie. I felt his character as Victor to be more memorable than even Ajith’s character (Sathyadev I.P.S.), and Arun has delivered a worthy performance befitting the role. a big round of applause to him. Harris Jayaraj has done a good background score for the fight scenes, that’s about it, nothing to say about the songs.
Everyone (Ajith, Arun, Anushka) in the movie talks to themselves in many places, kind of a voice over giving a self confession. This technique was unique when Gautham delivered it in Kaakha Kaakha. It re-vibrated when Suriya speaks to us in the opening scene of KK, but doing the same in 2015, feels like the director not being sure we will understand the story telling and we need a manual to guide us through.
Coming to Ajith, this is a character that comes natural for him. He looks younger in his older (pepper-salt) makeup than his younger version. Sathyadev character is sure to be celebrated by his fans for a long time. In between the present time and the past, Ajith travels to many places around the country. The visuals showing far-away places of the country including Sikkim was breath taking to watch on screen. But this travel sequence somehow felt to be force-fitted to give a purpose to the title of the movie – Yennai Arindhaal (if you know me).
Yennai Arindhaal is a good action film, but I was expecting more from combination of an ace director like Gautham and Ultimate star.
Continuing the trend set by Lingaa, I and Isai, Yennai Arindhaal too runs for over 3 hours, by the time interval comes fatigue sets in.