Movie Review: Thuppakki

An army man on vacation takes on a terrorist leader planning massive attacks in Mumbai. That is the story in a nutshell. So you have Jagadish(Vijay) who is in Mumbai for vacation, meets a girl(Kajal Aggarwal) on his parent's insistence, rejects her on various grounds, repents the decision soon, courts her shamelessly and spends all his idle time with his inspector friend(Sathyan). While doing all these, he accidentally uncovers a terrorist sleeper cell. Now he has to thwart their plans. He succeeds the first attempt. Then the sleeper cell leader(Vidyut Jamwal) is irked.

This time, A R Murgadoss addresses the issue of terrorism in this movie with an Indian army man as the resourceful protagonist trying to stand up on his own, never complaining about lack of anything. I like heroes who complains less and accomplishes a lot with less. There are a few of them from Indian cinema of late. But there are issues with this movie in spite of the interesting theme. The main problem with the movie is the first half where nothing happens and an interesting second half. If you analyze the first half, the best scenes are already shown in the trailer. In order to fill in the first half, unnecessary comic scenes with Sathyan, Jayaram(in the silliest role he has every played in his career) and Kajal Aggarwal (less said the better). The visuals looks stunning thanks to Santosh Sivan. The script by A R Murugadoss doesn't leave any scope for the editor Sreekar Prasad to make the proceeding racier. Harris Jayaraj's music is nice but the placement of the songs is not good for the narrative.

Vijay performs well as the army man often underplaying his weaknesses. Even though he doesn't get to sport army uniform, he gets to do many other things. The wardrobe has undergone an ocean of change. He also does what he has not done in most of the movies. He gets to mouth English and Hindi dialogues. Forget the diction. This is a good sign because Tamil actors(or read stars) are finally willing to change according to the script. Vidyut Jamwal gets to show off his mean side as the terrorist leader. Unlike Billa 2 where he had disappointing role despite a terrific screen presence, Vidyut is able to perform in this role. The biggest drawback of his performance is the voice over (sometimes in Tamil and sometimes in English), a mechanism used instead of subtitling, backfires and takes the steam off his performance. Then, that is the director's fault.

The movie is a cat-and-mouse game between the good and the bad. But the thrills are lacking. It is like a cracker in a cycle of cracks-fizzes-cracks. I recommend to wait for the DVD. Using this option, you can still get some work done while watching the interesting parts alone.

Language: Tamil

Genre: Thriller

Rating: **

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