“Enthiran” Film Review…

Release date: 1st October 2010
Starring: Rajinikanth, Aishwarya Rai Batchan, Danny Denzongpa, Santhanam, Karunas and others.
Directed by: Shankar
Screenplay by: Shankar
Story: Sujatha
Music by: AR Rahman
Lyrics: Vairamuthu, Pa Vijay, Madhan Kaarki Vairamuthu and Kash n’ Krissy
Choreography by: Raju Sundaram and Claudia Bruckmann
Cinematography by: Rathnavelu
Art: Sabu Cyril
Animation: Stan Winston Studio, USA
Editing: Anthony
Produced by: Kalanidhi Maran and Hansraj Saxena (Sun Pictures)
Running Time: 155 mins
MPAA Rating: G (General)
Genre: Action/Adventure/SciFi/Fantasy/Romance

Rating: 45%
Summary: Most expensive Indian film with well known actors and acclaimed technicians – film should have been a mega hit, but it is a failure because of the direction and screenplay, long unwanted scenes, pathetic romantic scenes and bad comedy. A film that is an insult to viewer’s intelligence!

This is a simple triangular love story. Dr Vaseegaran (Rajinikanth), a scientist creates a robot named Chitti (Rajinikanth again), in the hope that the robot could eventually be useful to the Indian army to fight wars without the loss of human life. Chitti has to be taken to an approval panel which has to test and approve it’s worthiness for military use. Professor Bhora (Danny Denzongpa) who is Dr Vaseegaran’s former mentor is part of this panel to test Chitti. Professor Bhora is jealous of Dr. Vaseegaran’s success and objects the use of Chitti in military as it doesn’t have human feelings. To rectify this Dr Vaseegarn works hard to teach human feelings to Chitti. Sana (Aishwarya Rai Batchan), Dr. Vaseegaran’s girlfriend wants to keep Chitti to assist with her studies and house work during her university examinations. Chitti starts to fall in love with Sana and Dr Vaseegarn gets annoyed and jealous of Chitti’s behaviour towards her. When Chitti fails the trial for military, Dr Vaseegaran disassembles and dumps the parts.

Professor Bhora finds broken Chitti and re-assembles him and gives him a red chip that makes the robot an evil killing machine. The newly assembled Chitti kills Professor Bhora, kidnaps Sana, creates hundreds of Chitti’s, robs and kills people. Blame is placed on Dr Vaseegaran for all this destruction and mayhem. What Dr Vaseegaran does to stop Chitti, forms the rest of the story.

Acting – Danny Denzongpa as Professor Bhora has done his role extremely well and is believable as Professor and villain. It is a real pity that he didn’t have more screen space. The other good performance comes predictably from Rajinikanth as a “villain” Chitti. It is well documented that Rajinkanth at his best is when he acts as a villain, and this is another testimony for that sentiment. Dr Vaseegaran and “good” Chitti are average performances; there is nothing to write home about. Aishwarya Rai Batchan as Sana has done an ok job, not that she had a challenging role. The talented Santhanam and Karunas have been wasted in this film, as they have not been given enough scope to act.

Direction and Screenplay – Shankar who has a high reputation fails miserably in this film (again, as in his last few films). He did make good movies such as “Gentleman”, “Kadhalan”, “Indian”, “Jeans” and “Mudhalvan” once, but lately, he has been creating below-par movies starting from “Boys”, “Anniyan”, “Shivaji” and now “Enthiran”. He takes a story, applies his standard “formula” to it and makes a film with unnecessary graphics, lame jokes and wastes money on sets/costumes that do not add anything to the story. This has been happening from his early days as a director, however after repeating this formula time after time, it has got to the stage that it can’t be tolerated any more. Especially now when there are other young directors who are able to produce a final result that is, much better than Shankar’s with a lower budget.

If we look at “Enthiran” there are holes in the story from start to end, the screenplay is very boring and in some scenes it did not make any sense. At the end there are a lot of graphics and a few words such as “de-magnetising”, “deworming”, ‘de-bugging”, etc. Somehow by throwing these words around miraculously Dr Vaseegaran overcomes Chitti. Dr Vaseegaran was not able to do anything to stop Chitti for a long time, but once he uses all these words and types some kind of codes into a computer set up in a van, suddenly Chitti and his fellow robots are destroyed. To make these scenes worse Shankar has showed graphics after graphics where Chitti and his creations are forming all kind of different shapes and figures almost like synchronized swimming!

Earlier in the movie there is a scene where Sana gets upset with Dr Vaseegaran for not paying enough attention to her and decides to break up with him, so both of them bring all gifts that they received from each other in a suitcase and return them to each other. Then the hero says to Sana that she has not returned the kisses, so he can’t break up with her. So she kisses him and the scene continues in a manner the audience has to cringe. Rajinikanth looks sleazy with a much younger Aishwarya Rai Batchan. Following this scene, comes a song in which Rajinkanth is trying to look like Suriya from “Varaunam Ayiram” film with a guitar. Why?

The heights of Shankar’s (lack of) talent in direction come out when Chitti comes to Sana’s room in the middle of the night wanting a kiss from her. Sana says that a mosquito bit her and she will only give him a kiss if he can bring that mosquito. Chitti goes finds the mosquito, has a conversation with multiple mosquitos and brings back the ‘guilty’ mosquito to Sana, so that it can apologies to her. I can’t think of any director who could think of a scene like this other than Shankar!

Special Effects / Animation – This is definitely a positive in this film and is the best animation that has been seen in Tamil films. However, there was too much of it inserted into the film so that it makes you want the film to end. Some scenes were not executed well, such as the scene that involved a burning apartment building is on fire as this looks very artificial.

Settings / Locations – Can see that the makers of the film have put in a lot of effort to find good places to shoot the film, particularly songs. This is definitely a positive in the film and adds to the entertainment.

Cinematography - This was a positive in the film. Rathnavelu has done a great job, as expected. He has been one of the cinematographers who have been doing well consistently. If you want to be very critical, there are couple of shots of Aishwarya Rai Batchan which was a in an awkward angle and a bit too close. But this does happen often in Indian films.

Background music – AR Rahman has done a good job on this, as nothing made you lose focus from the film or story. But nothing less is expected of AR Rahman.

Editing – This was very crisp, as explained earlier may be a lot of the movie should have been cut up because of bad direction and long unwanted scenes. However, that is the fault of the director and not the editor.

Songs – I am intending on writing another blog on Enthiran music. So I will not comment on the songs in this blog.

There is nothing wrong with Enthiran story and there is nothing wrong with Tamil cinema wanting to experiment with sci-fi. Sci-fi is not new to Tamil cinema, as director SJ Suriya has done similar sci-fi like “New” and “Vyabari” that comes to the mind immediately. Particularly “Vyabari” film had a lot of similar aspects to this film. Ofcourse a countless films from Hollywood, Bollywood and Kollywood have inspired this film, and there is nothing wrong with it long as it’s not a direct copy of it.

However, very poor direction, long unwanted special effects scenes, cliché romance scenes and some poor comedy scenes have ruined this film that is said to be the most expensive film yet from India. Shankar has (ab)used the big banner production (which poured in the money with no restrictions), mass hero Rajinikanth (who has given more than two years of his call sheet), ex miss world Aishwarya Rai Batchan, Oscar winner AR Rahman, along with good technicians from Kollywood/Bollywood/Hollywood in making this film. Most of the above have given their time and effort to this film, but because of the poor direction their efforts are wasted. If all these resources were given to a good director, the result would have been an outstanding film.

Just for comparison if you look at a the well directed Hollywood sci-fi film from last year “District 9” it cost only 75% of the amount that was spent on “Enthiran” film. This would give a good referral point for people who want to compare “Enthiran” with Hollywood films.

Because this film has such big names involved and because of the branding of Sun TV there is a lot of hype created, which had helped in pre-bookings for tickets and also in a big opening. However, unless the audience of this film and media provide honest feed-back about it, directors like Shankar will keep insulting our intelligence by using popular artists and technicians to create more rubbish.

When Tamil cinema is making history and being noticed around the World slowly for quality films by good young directors, films like these are a slowing down the progress of it. It’s time that the Tamil cinema audience request more intelligent films and make sure that they don’t put up with rubbish because their favorite actors or technicians are involved in a project. Be objective!