By Sai Rajasekar
Its absolutely great to see Vikram setting the box office and now OTT on fire. After everything Kamal Hassan has done for movies all this time, its something that was long overdue. He could have easily taken the “parallel cinema” route and made the indie festival kind and gotten more acclaim. But the fact that he decided to fight it out in the commercial format despite the Rajini onslaught initially & Ajith-Vijay later on shows his mettle. That meant he made one for him and one for the crowd- the odds were still okay as we got to see Kamal on the bog screen.
So while watching Vikram, I admired it for its undiluted genre narrative and brilliant set pieces. But the question remained- but hang on where is Kamal in the whole proceedings?
Lets look at Pettai, the other successful fanboy movie. Its an absolute carnival movie for Rajini fans. You can count the scenes where Rajini is not there and it brings us the fun side of Rajini through effective winking, But why Karthik Subbaraj is a genius is in where he doesn’t stop at just winking and builds on the Rajini verse. The “soozhchi” and “Raja Thandiram” arc towards the climax is something where we haven’t seen Rajini enter. The moral compass of the Rajini character post Annamalai didn’t deviate much. Here we see him siting Bali to deceive the Vijay Sethupathi character. And boy o boy was it fun. You got the gate opening entry, the dance, the fight, the interval reveal- it was the whole package.
Lucifer again is 180 minutes soaked in pure “Lalisms”. The mundu wearing Stephen Nedumpally in Lal’s trademark slanting swag is what the doctor ordered and what Murali Gopi & Prithviraj Sukumaran gave us. The call back to Spadikam, Irupatham Nootandu and Shaji Kailas movies of the 90s landed really well. But Murali and Prithviraj bring something of their own as well. -Stephen throughout the movie is restrained and doesn’t utter the page long dialogues associated with the genre and bring in the illumanti angle as well. So again it pushes the Lal fandom to new spaces.
Vikram is a curious case where if the screenplay writer’s name is not revealed, one might guess its written by Kamal himself. There’s a lot of Kamal philosophy which sits really well within the Lokesh Universe and that’s excellent writing but it doesn’t expand beyond it. Its good as an idea to show Kamal as just a ghost in the entire first half. But the three way tussle means actor lays low to the screenplay which is a good thing but is it a fanboy sambhavam?. Hmm. Not so “Yen Kannu Venumnu Kettiyame”. Now that’s a fanboy sambhavam and the OG great GVM got it way back.
It might not have the winking of Kuruthi Punal, Vetrivizha, Alavandhaan etc and thankfully the derivative stuff of Nolan that Vikram has but Raghavan is one Kamal performance for the ages.
“Karka Karka” is textbook hero entry song, the procedural scenes of the investigation, the hospital scene after his wife gets killed- the classic Kamal nostril affair and even a Kamal character going on first date. Even the Chennai slang of Kamal’s feels authentic here and gets done with it in a scene.
What’s even more interesting is barring Vishwaroopam, these two are the movies which worked critically and commercially and both were Kamal came in just as an actor.
So Vikram raking in the moolah is a good thing. Maybe we will finally get to see Kamal with a Vetri Maaran, a Pa. Ranjith(fingers crossed), or even one with Manikandan These are the stuff that true blue fanboys wait for..
Baradwaj Rangan 
vijay
July 16, 2022
Vettaiyaadu vilayaadu had one of the worst lines in all of Tamil cinema..Kamal at the end querying the killlers ..”homosexualsa neenga?” after the said fact had been neon lighted earlier in the film..
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karzzexped
July 16, 2022
Where there is a Kamal, there is a vijay 😉
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ivan
July 16, 2022
Sai Rajasekar is GVM’s pen name? 🙂
Revisit Marudhanayagam trailer (1997), compare it with Ponniyin Selvan (2022), which is more intriguing, lol. Kamal Hassan lost his mojo ever since his desires for gimmicks took precedence over the story, sad.
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KayKay
July 17, 2022
vijay, within the context of the movie and character, it makes perfect sense. The Cop is taunting The Killer, forcing him to lose his objectivity and make a wrong move. Classic psychological tactic.
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karzzexped
July 17, 2022
@KayKay, the cop taunting aside, I could in my view genuinely perceive a homoerotic undercurrent between Amuthan and Ila.
Maybe this question needs to be raised to Mr. GVM, but I’ve always seen the duo as serial killing lovers.
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Jeeva Pitchaimani
July 17, 2022
Sai Rajasekhar, cheers man. I am a big fan of VV. I don’t know whether there is anything for which I will revisit Vikram. But I have watched VV multiple times. I think it is completely fit to call itself a fanboy sambavam. As you said, Vikram wasn’t one, in my opinion. And the most important reason for which I like VV is it had Kamal playing himself almost rather than he doing a “different” role. GVM was simply content to sit back and watch his icon do his everyday things in VV which was pretty nice.
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madhusudhan194
July 17, 2022
@Sai Rajasekar: I agree that Vettaiadu is the best among all the fanboy films in Tamil. It’s Kamal’s best film in the last two decades along with Papanasam. Vikram was fun while it lasted but ultimately wasn’t as satisfying either a Kamal film or as a pure action film. I couldn’t wrap my head around most of the plot points as the film just didn’t breathe. It was fun mainly for the way the action was shot and some solid mass moments for Kamal. Vettaiadu was just supremely satisfying – It had solid action (for the time it released), solid procedural sequences, Kamal holding fort strongly, lovely songs and one of Tamil cinema’s finest romantic tracks ever. It just had everything. It doesn’t get enough credit for being a beautifully balanced masala film.
I haven’t seen Lucifer so i can’t comment on it. Petta again had some super solid Rajini moments but didn’t come together very well. But yes, watching Rajini as a badass murderer was a terrific bonus.
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ivan
July 17, 2022
By the way, what’s fanboy ‘sambhavam’ exactly?
I watched VV with a bunch of hardcore Kamal fans. When the movie finished, a friend’s immediate reaction was ‘padam okay but Kamal should have acted in the original in the cop series, KK rather than this VV, simply because the latter seems so meh in comparison. Any Kamal fans felt this way? Maybe we had high expectation at that time with the killer combo of GVM (right after KK) and Kamal (just 2 years after Virumandi).
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ravenus1
July 17, 2022
“After everything Kamal Hassan has done for movies all this time, its something that was long overdue. He could have easily taken the “parallel cinema” route and made the indie festival kind and gotten more acclaim. But the fact that he decided to fight it out in the commercial format despite the Rajini onslaught initially & Ajith-Vijay later on shows his mettle. That meant he made one for him and one for the crowd- the odds were still okay as we got to see Kamal on the bog screen.”
Seriously, dude? You’re making it sound like Kamal doing commercial films was some kind of heroic sacrifice to a greater cause. Not to discount his talents as an actor or movie-maker, but if Kamal’s movies are about one thing, they are about Kamal himself. I would even go so far as to say sometimes potentially great ideas were prevented from reaching their full potential on account of Kamal’s desire to put his own persona as a movie personality at the forefront of a movie and generate sympathy / admiration for his own character above all else, which is the antithesis of what a “parallel cinema” scene is all about.
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madhusudhan194
July 17, 2022
@Ivan: I always felt VV was better than KK. VV felt more refined, brutal, sure-footed in it’s craft and unapologetic in it’s storytelling. I was in 8th standard with no exposure to Hollywood then and I remember feeling like I hadn’t seen anything like it before. The mature romantic track – of two broken people tentatively exploring a new relationship and coming together was so fresh and new at that point. It felt like discovering a new kind of cinema. There was no dumbing down. No tamil translation of English dialogues. The villains, whether you liked them or not, were strong and threatening enough for you to care. The procedural part was brilliantly written. It was a masala film made with realism. That was rare in tamil cinema. And after KK, it actually did seem like another story from a police officer’s life.
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Madan
July 17, 2022
“You’re making it sound like Kamal doing commercial films was some kind of heroic sacrifice to a greater cause. ” – I agree with you on this but this is exactly why I heard whistling for almost every Kamal appearance on the screen while watching Vikram which I hadn’t when I saw VV, Virumaandi, Pammal K all in theater. At that time, people, including Kamal fans, watched a Kamal film because it was a film. It was, whether or not misplaced, a promise of something a cut above the rest (of Kollywood) and more cinematic rather than pure mass. It seems like now Kamal fans regret being ‘harsh’ on him while the Rajni-Ajith-Vijay fanboys lap up anything and everything they do and they decided to over-compensate with this film.
I know that this is now Kamal’s highest grossing film of all time but I would like to check back in ten years how many here could even watch Vikram ten times vis a vis how many more times they probably watched Aboorva Sagotharargal. Or MMKR or any number of his Crazy Mohan collabs. This is one of the most generic products to have ever come out with the Kamal stamp on it. By some curious coincidence, Ilayaraja made this English song Come Free Me which is decent (despite the feat that even after being mastered in Britain, it sounds like…well, an Ilayaraja recording job) but generic to the core.
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ivan
July 17, 2022
Madhusudhan19 – Alright, your experience been different due to various factors (age at which you watched it, etc).
For me KK was refreshing at that time, but VV seemed mediocre (barring the romantic track) and that could be due to exposure to Hollywood movies/tv series. Kamal fans are conditioned to associate Kamal with uniqueness, so seeing someone of his calibre acting in VV wasn’t a great feeling. He was too lethargic. Don’t get me started about Daniel Balaji – over the top acting and I don’t know what to make of the Hannibal poster behind his wall. This is something I couldn’t fathom out about GVM or Loki who claim to be Kamal fans, they never paired him with great villains, as you know Kamal milestone movies are packed with terrific villains.
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ivan
July 17, 2022
Madan: “Generic” movies like Vikram could be the type of movie that help people pull themselves out of a movie slump. I wouldn’t want to watch AS when I’m moody 🙂
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Madan
July 17, 2022
ivan: Each to his own. I am tired of those kind of justifications and cannot agree. I am indeed thankful for what Kamal did do for Tamil cinema but that’s as far as it goes.
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Sai Rajasekar
July 17, 2022
Ivan, about KK vs VV
Anbu Chelvan, Raghavan and Satyadev are pretty much the same character at different timelines.
Raghavan is someone whose seen everything and so he’s got that chill factor with him as opposed to the hot headed Anbu Chelvan who is probably in his early police days. It could also be because Kamal wasnt really keen on doing VV itself as GVM had stated. Probably that also was a happy accident. But the eye gesture in the entry scene was complete Kamal improvisation. Legend
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Sai Rajasekar
July 17, 2022
Ravenus1, probably not a favour, but it is definitely good for mainstream commercial tamil industry that Kamal has existed in this space as he pushed the boundaries here and resultantly others were forced to churn out good stuff. Because essentially you need star- actors here. I would say Kamal’s role here is as significant as Rajini’s in taking the size of Kollywood industry where it is today
About him taking precedence to the movie, it’s a grey area. One might think Nayakan is a movie where he came in just as an actor, but as was written in BR’s book, lot of scenes where Kamal involved in a bigger way. Virumandi, a case where Napolean and Pasupathy had decent space. In his earlier days, he was just a clay on which KB, K Vishwanath and others moulded art. Its only when directors were not giving him meaty stuff, i guess he decided to write
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Odiyan Hater
July 18, 2022
I completely second Madan Ji’s views on Vikram.
As a Kamal Hassan fan Vikram is a massive let down. The movie was a letdown even as a Lokesh Kanakaraj film; Kaithi is way superior….
And until this blog post and Madan Ji’s comment I had thought I was the only one felt this way. In fact, my first thought after watching Vikram was, ‘wow this one doesn’t hold a candle to Vettaiyaadu Villaiyadu’
Even as an agent Kamal was way more fun in Vishwaroopam. The Kamal’s daughter in law discovering Kamal was an agent bit reminded me of the Pooja Kumar discovering her husband is an agent bit in Vishwaroopam. Kamal’s own Thoongavanam is much superior to Vikram when it comes to style and stunts…
There are two Kamal Hassan’s: 1) The Kamal who does Vishwaroopam, Thoongavanam etc and 2) The Kamal who does Pothy’s ad, Big Boss, releases an incomplete Vishwaroopam 2, Vikram
Vikram is basically catered towards the current marvel loving folks (style over substance)… The movie would have been a similar or even bigger hit had it started even Balakrishna…
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Odiyan: Thanks for the laugh, Balakrishna as Agent Vikram …lol. Kamal wasn’t fun but annoying as the effeminate guy in Vishwaroopam and that transformation scene was silly.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Sai Rajasekar: I see your point. Thanks. Is there anything about VV that you didn’t like?
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Madan
July 18, 2022
” Its only when directors were not giving him meaty stuff, i guess he decided to write” – This is how it started out, true, (though I have a hard time believing SPM’s direction was particularly meaty and Kamal still went along with what the films required anyway and maybe that was because of SPM’s commercial track record) and it was fair enough but it also crossed over more and more into self-indulgence in the 00s. Him completely appropriating films that tanked at the BO didn’t help, like Anbe Sivam. In a sense, VV was him going back to his early-mid 80s phase and not trying too hard to act.
Unfortunately, Vikram is in an even bigger correction in that direction and he was for the most mumbling in a semi-baritone and not using his range. Like going from not trying too hard to act to not acting but just being Kamal in every frame. Combine that with plentiful grey hair and lodda-lotta physique and this was very much like Kamal trying to be Ajith. This loss of self-confidence both on his part and the fans was so disappointing to me. Yes, he’s got his hit now but it’s mostly by negating whatever he stood for. Once I saw the film, all the pre-release talk of Kamal completely giving a free hand to LK made sense; he seems to feel like he has lost touch too much with the market to know what works so he just let those who are delivering hits make one, whatever that might be.
I was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea of Kamal as hired gun and used to say it would be better for him to just let directors direct him than always try to impose the film he wants to make. Unfortunately, I should have realized that with Kamal’s market value, him as hired gun will only amount to turning him into another ‘mass’ vehicle and no director is probably going to have the guts to make a film that’s mainstream and yet affords space for Kamal to do what Kamal can do. Rajni does not have this problem because the mass vehicle is defined in the idea of his own 90s blockbusters like Annamalai and Baasha so he can make a Petta and remain ‘true’ to his image. That said, while the pro-Vikram critique seems to be that it is a pure action film and cuts out the fluff, I actually found the Simran love interest angle, the flashback and the palace intrigue in the end all went a long way to making Petta more engaging than it would have been if like Vikram it had been mounted to be one long fight scene. Not to mention that Singa Singh was a far more interesting villain than Sandhanam.
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madhusudhan194
July 18, 2022
@ivan: I do find the film to have aged quite well. As Jeeva mentioned i have watched the film many times since and it holds up quite well. I don’t know if lethargic is the word I’d use to describe Kamal’s performance. We’re used to seeing him play there ultra dramatic characters that when he underplays, maybe it comes across as lethargic. He’s quite effective in the role and as far as I can remember the only actor who made GVM’s cheesy dialogues seem like he owned it. Watch Suriya’s dialogue delivery in Vaaranam aayiram and you’ll find the difference.
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Heisenberg
July 18, 2022
Well I didn’t like Vikram much either, but success of movie is not a great mystery. Kamal hasn’t done a movie since 2015 (barring the upma he dished out as Viswaroopam 2). People had kinda forgotten what he could do on screen (like how virat kohli is treated now). Compared to all the biggies in recent years, Vikram was fairly engaging movie and didn’t fall into the ‘WTF’ category like Beast, Valimai, Annathe.
But I don’t think kamal has lost everything he stood for by doing a Vikram. This was probably required for him for personal financial troubles and resurrecting his market. His lineup based on the meetings he had with are quite interesting – Pa.Ranjith has confirmed one, Vetrimaran had a discussion, but didn’t have a script. He is writing his own screenplays as usual and has a competent director in Mahesh narayanan (unlike ramesh aravind or Sundar C). There’s a commerical one with Shankar. This lineup pretty much looks like what kamal used to in late 90s-2000s balancing his dream movies with commerical/comedy movies.
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brangan
July 18, 2022
Sai Rajasekar: About him taking precedence to the movie, it’s a grey area. One might think Nayakan is a movie where he came in just as an actor, but as was written in BR’s book, lot of scenes where Kamal involved in a bigger way.
Actually, every thinking actor’s job IS to involve himself/herself in the film in a big way. Kamal just implemented it here, right from the 16 VAYADHINILE and KOKILA days. He even financed other films like MULLUM MALARUM when the producer ran of out money.
So even in the early days, he was never a “puppet actor” who just does what his scene requires or what the director says. He may have been so in his purely “I will do this for money” films like KAKKI SATTAi (which did not much have much scope for a thinking actor anyway; he just needed to be a star). Otherwise, he always found “actorly” ways to enliven the scene in ways the screenwriter could not have imagined while writing. (That ink-spilling scene in MOONDRAM PIRAI is a classic example.)
Singeetham has many stories about how Kamal was involved in the screenplay etc. in RAAJAPAARVAI and so forth. So he always was “not just an actor”, going so far as to say he was not happy with a take even if the director said it worked.
Again, I am not talking about the end result (whether these interventions worked or seemed excessive) but about Kamal’s process of involving himself in a film. It was always 200%, except probably in exceptions like VETTAIYAADU, as GVM has said.
It probably helped that he came of age as an adult actor (post ARANGETRAM) right around the time when his Hollywood-influenced techniques and knowledge and interests COULD be used in our films, because along with him came a whole bunch of directors who had a clear “vision”. (Balu Mahendra, for instance, studied film.) In earlier decades, with the exception of a Sridhar and a few more, a “director” was essentially a traffic controller, making sure things went well on set. (I leave out Balachander because he became a “film director” only in the early 70s, again right around the time Kamal and others came on the scene. And to his credit, he managed to reorient himself quite a bit — not entirely, though — from “stage thinking” to “cinema thinking”.)
I have always wondered why we never had a Bimal Roy or a Guru Dutt. But maybe we were just very theatrically oriented and no one thought much beyond “say your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.”
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Madan
July 18, 2022
We’ll see. Success is its own cage and the temptation to repeat a winning formula will be too great. I also think once bitten twice shy will come into play here. Having finally erased his debts with Vikram (assuming he’s done so), Kamal will not be keen to get into a mess again.
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Madan
July 18, 2022
Also the environment generally around cinema post covid is either exhilarating if mass movies are all you want to see or depressing if you want something other than mass on the big screen. It’s hardly just Kolly. Bollywood has got relentlessly singed at the BO and even Holly is moving to strictly franchise/remake tentpoles on the big screen. So even if Kamal wants to take risks again, there won’t be an environment that supports it at least for the next two to three years… unless he settles for an OTT vehicle. And after the success of Vikram, there is no reason for him to do so.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
For now, I think the only possible way for Kamal to satisfy his hardcore fans is by taking a step back from Hollywood kinda movies and focussing on our ethnic/cultural movies. How about resuming Marudhanayagam. Kamal sir…Aarambikalangala?
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Srinivas R
July 18, 2022
Vetayadu Vilayadu definitely ahead of Vikram for me. In VV, the only clunky bit was “why are the villians who they are” explanation. Kamal as an actor was terrific in that movie imo.
I liked Vikram but it bit off way more than it can chew. Drug cartel, Ruthless villian and his family, uncover squad, vigilante cops , father-son-grandson dynamic, a romantic interest that we know will meet a brutal from the moment we see her. Too many things not tied up coherently imo. What worked was seeing Kamal on screen after a long time, the call backs to Kamal movies fit in inobstrusively, Fahad Faasil in terrific form. Also much better than recent Tamil movie biggies.
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Madan
July 18, 2022
Fahad Fasil did hold the film magnificently well, albeit mainly in the first half. Much of my disappointment also stems from the movie now amounting to what it could have been. But the moment Kamal was already revealed as the ghost right before intermission, I sensed this would now go in a much more manipulative and playing to the gallery direction than the pretty well done police procedural of the first half. And that’s unfortunately how it panned out. There was another movie to be made by giving Kamal space and yet keeping him and Fahad apart. It could have been a much more suspenseful affair but possibly a risk. And risk is anathema in showbiz today.
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Madan
July 18, 2022
*movie NOT amounting to what it could have been
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Macaulay Perapulla
July 18, 2022
@BR Off topic, long back there was talk about Hariharan writing a book on Kamal. It was titled Citizen K. Did he shelve that project? I so wish you and him collaborate and get the book out.
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KS
July 18, 2022
A bit late to the party, but while it warms my heart seeing Kamal so happy and relieved thanks to the stupendous success of Vikram, I hate to admit that the movie itself didn’t do much for me. The movie seems to have gotten way way too much hype, with fans going overboard in praising even mundane scenes like the interval block. It was an incoherent mess of too many half-baked elements inserted just for the supposed coolness factor. Too many one-note characters, cliched plotlines that never went anywhere, and Kamal’s character was totally confusing and uninteresting.
Like why did he have to elaborately stage his death at all and end up attracting attention to him and his background? He could have just been a grieving drunkard wastrel who would have been ignored by the agencies. The assasinations were all limp and made no impact. Even the initial procedural was uninteresting as there is no real mystery, nor was the unraveling clever. The Kamal monologue about drugs and how his mission isn’t about revenge was very unconvincing and disingenuous. It was hard to root for any character or care about what was happening. Even the Suriya Rolex dialogues just sounded silly and gimmicky, not at all menacing. The only positives were the different theme music bits for the characters.
When I heard Vikram was a badass action movie, I expected something like a Kuruthipunal, and was sorely disappointed.
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KS
July 18, 2022
In contrast, VettaiyaduVailaiyadu was a masterpiece, and my favorite Kamal movie from the last two decades. A rare combination of mass (the action scenes, intro song, cheeky dialogues) and class (the romance, the procedural, the music, and overall look and feel). The first half was sublime in its treatment of both the procedural and the romance, splicing them together smoothly. The second half was a bit generic, but still doesn’t ruin the experience on the whole.
It was a simple straight plot with a small number of characters, executed with impeccable detail, dedication, craft and style. As opposed to a hodgepodge like Vikram with a hundred half-assed characters and dangling plot threads covering up for a weak and cliched story. Team VettaiyaduVilaiyadu anyday.
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vijay
July 18, 2022
“The movie seems to have gotten way way too much hype, with fans going overboard in praising even mundane scenes like the interval block.”
—while others like you seem to have succumbed to the hype 🙂 Commiserations..
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Madan
July 18, 2022
Exactly, first he is like a crouching tiger and then suddenly in interval block he becomes tennaatu singam, broadcasting his presence for whole world to see and making a target out of himself. I already described many of the dissonant aspects in the film thread but the man preaching sacrifice for drug free society sacrificing his lieutenants to protect his grandson (who is already so sick he may not make it alive to his ancestor’s age) was the biggest headache scratcher of all. If it was an ironic send up of nepotism, it wasn’t even slightly implied.
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KS
July 18, 2022
@Madan: lol, don’t get me started. I couldn’t understand most scenes in the movie. Maybe you guys could clarify and explain-like-i’m-five.
1) To repeat, why did he bother faking his death, that too replicating the pattern of the assassinations? If he had just passed away due to sorrow or heart attack, it would have been silently ignored. Instead of putting him suspiciously in the league of assasinated high-ranking officials. Not only did that invite a special investigation, but the real culprits should have obviously and immediately smelled a rat. And worse, as @Madan pointed out, he revealed his face for a dramatic interval block, wasting all of these useless plans.
2) What was the deal with his prostitute visit (apart from being an excuse for the ooh aah music) or the drunken golf trips or the gym brawl (apart from being an excuse for a Singaravelan callback)? What did he need a surveillance blind spot for? And why specifically these conspicuous public spots?
3) The interval block hardly made sense either. Kamal and his men infiltrate a wedding guarded by a horde of goons including the top brass, apart from a batallion of cops and agents. Okay, I guess I can let that slide. But then they so casually manage to seat their target pillion on a bike and ride out of there in full view of the gawking goons and dons and armed agents?
4) Why did FaFa bomb Sandhanam’s house? He had no personal stake in the matter or specific enmity against Sandhanam or his pointless large super-kudumbam, he was a cold professional all along, and was through with the mission by then. Oh wait, its to set in motion the predictable murder of his wife, of course. Also, was Sandhanam supposed to be a Heisenberg or an Escobar? He hardly seemed physically or mentally tough enough to be a boss, except when he went all irumugam and got a hit of speed, and I could hardly hear him through all the muffled crushing of his teeth.
5) Ex-agents, even if they are “disgraced” and “hunted down”, don’t just get to hide and waste away as call-taxi drivers or domestic helps or nannies or underground boxers. They have too useful and rare a set of skills, and (clandestinely at least) are recruited by various government/private security firms for high profile projects. Its as if agent Tina was made a house servant just so her viswaroopam would hit us. Or worse, Kamal exploited all his talented ex-agents, with their scary skills, to serve as bodyguards for his grandson, as @Madan pointed out. With all of them sacrificing their lives to to save that fragile and worthless kid.
6) Was that kid even his grandson? Was Kalidas his son? What was the reason for this ambiguity? Either own their relationship, or stay far away so they aren’t targeted by association. This half-assed “Kalidas adopted his father recently” gimmick made no sense. And all his ex-agents, and most of his new squad all died. And all for what? To save that kid and finish Sandhanam. One of the apparently hundreds of easily replaceable underlings of Rolex.
7) Why did Kamal play the Chakku-Chakku song on speaker? Sure, like most elements in the movie, it was fun and looked cool, but made little sense in the narrative (the Jumbalakka in Kaithi made sense in that scene). The prison has cameras, so drowning out a mike with a song to cover up a jailbreak does not work. It only attracts more attention.
8) Man, Kamal was such a disappointment. He seemed to change accents on a whim, looked really old and weak, and the movie didn’t feel like a Kamal movie at all. I fail to understand what Kamal saw in this story. Again, I’m always happy to see him succeed, but just sad that of all his work, this is the one that succeeds best. Hope he doesn’t say “fuck it, if this is what the idiots want, might as well make some more money instead of straining myself at this age”.
I could go on, but this is just off the top of my head. As @vijay said, maybe I did buy into all the hype since it was almost unanimous. Even on this blog, only @Madan went against the tide of effusive praise. Just to clarify, I am not saying I hated the movie. I did enjoy it mostly- especially the fast action scenes in the second half. But its so forgettable and makes no impact.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
KS – You will get your answers in the sequel/prequel (if memory serves me right with whatever Loki said in the interview). To be frank, some scenes made sense to me only after that interview. As I already mentioned in the other thread, Kamal saw nothing extraordinary but maybe he very badly wanted a semi hit but to his surprise luck favored him and he hit the jackpot. I still feel he’ll stick to the typical Kamal movie but instead of doing comedy movies intermittently, he might also now venture into mass movies. Loki said they went back and forth with many ideas before settling with Vikram which makes me wonder at times if this is the only type of movies which could appease Kamal where he doesn’t get intellectually excited and stays hands off, VV too (hollywood kinda non ethnic movies). I’m curious to see if Kamal will ever work with people like Vetrimaran (rustic rural movies) without any gimmicks.
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Srinivas R
July 18, 2022
@KS – Will add to your list – 9) What was even the point of Rolex intro. Of all the hyped up elements in the movie, this was the biggest let down. The movie is over, why do I need another blood spattered character intro. Suriya was okay, but he is not badass by an distance. The character showing off about who he is made no sense at all.
10) What is the point of Sandhanam’s large family? I mean they all could have been his loyal henchmen and it would change nothing.
Come to think of it, this is a Fahad Faasil movie, his Amar was a character I could follow and root for. Agent Tina was a surprise and it worked well. Apart from that all characters are wishy washy.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Srinivas – that’s interesting. Yeah, it appears like a Fahadh’s movie with everything else serving as a backdrop similar to Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight (it’s a Joker’s movie rather than Batman).
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Madan
July 18, 2022
KS: Point no 8 is exactly my apprehension. When this succeeds after a string of flops, it gives him a strong signal that this is what people want to see. It’s not even some first weekend carpet bombing hit, it ran for a bunch of weeks even here in Mumbai. I felt like it would have done even better had it covered more screens.
And as for the myriad head scratchers you mentioned, they didn’t make sense to me either. I guess ‘respecting and not talking down to audience’ has now been carried to such an extreme that the director only needs to put together a set of fun scenes and can leave the audience to fill the gaps.
If ten years back the complaint was that Tamil cinema was still a 35mm nadagam and lacked focus on arresting visuals, it now appears as if the pendulum has swung all the way to making entertaining set pieces that don’t amount to a satisfying whole.
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madhusudhan194
July 18, 2022
In hindsight, I am wondering how BR was so kind on the film. Was he having his own fanboy moment watching his favorite actor get the thundering reception that was long overdue?
BR was quite harsh on CCV (rightly so), which was not a mass film but equally incoherent, had plenty of unclear plot points and was difficult to wrap your head around.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Madan: Don’t be too pessimistic. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. In the past too he has tasted success but went on experimenting without underestimating his true fans. At 67, how many actors can pull off a retired secret agent role convincingly – he was pure swag. I find him rugged and steady at this age compared to in VV. Also to be fair to Lokesh, VV is a standalone movie but Vikram isn’t so we need other series to fully understand the movie.
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vijay
July 18, 2022
if the next 2 directors are indeed Mahesh narayanan and Pa.Ranjith (leaving out the Shankar aberration)..that should rebalance a few things…
“VV is a standalone movie but Vikram isn’t so we need other series to fully understand the movie.’
try telling that to somebody who has spent a 1000 bucks and 4hrs of their life to watch THIS film. you leave them dissatisfied and on top of it you want them to spend more money to check out your sequel too? 🙂 A movie in a franchise still has to work on its own..
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Vijay: It’s a blockbuster so it worked for the majority, right? Too bad you wasted your resource on this one, I hope your intuition will serve you well next time 🙂
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Madan
July 18, 2022
ivan : Your reply was to vijay but I have already made my decision. Future Kamal films strictly on OTT for me. Especially if Anirudh is scoring. All that grunge may be kickass but he doesn’t HAVE to mix it at an ear splitting level.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Madan: Do as you please, as long you don’t throw tantrums. I really felt bad for you when BR reprimanded you in the other thread 🙂 You never fail to amuse me. Who else are you going to attack next – the background dancer in the Pathala song?
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Madan
July 18, 2022
Eh, thanks for nothing. BR was having a fanboy moment or got enraged for whatever other may be his reasons and I chose to deescalate by leaving the discussion. Do you think I am scared of arguing something to death with anyone? You must be very new to the blog if you actually believe that. And it’s not just me. vijay, KS have also expressed similar thoughts. Remember, in this country, majority rule whether in the movies or in elections is obtained with 30% votes. So don’t get too carried away with the success of Vikram. Besides it’s his success, not yours, not mine.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
“I chose to deescalate by leaving the discussion” – you didn’t take it well, you reacted
“You must be very new to the blog if you actually believe that” – Not new. Assumption is the mother of all ups
“Besides it’s his success, not yours, not mine” – add that affirmation to your daily routine
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Madan
July 18, 2022
ivan : OK if not new, then living under a rock. That wasn’t the first time he went into taking my case mode. That doesn’t bother me. But clearly my comments here bother you a lot given that you seem to be keeping score. Go ahead associate your identity with an actor some more, gonna do you a world of good.
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ivan
July 18, 2022
Madan: Take a deep breath and let go. I know we’ve been going back and forth, cheer up now, here I am extending my virtual friendship 🙂 What you do?
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Madan
July 18, 2022
I don’t ‘let go’ of people resorting to petty personal insults because somebody has a less than superlative opinion of their favourite star’s movie. I move on. So if you are done here, I am moving on. But as for friendship, thanks but no thanks. Good day to you.
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Cholan Raje
July 18, 2022
Was not a big fan of FaFa’s character either. Easily the most boring character he’s ever played.
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Madan
July 18, 2022
Cholan Raje: I agree with you and still loved his performance because even in that role, he showed what an actor immersing himself into a role looks like. Even towards the end, he played the part of desperately trying to save the child so well.
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Cholan Raje
July 18, 2022
Madan: Ofc. I’ve never been able to complain about any of his performances. I’m just so used to him being quirky that I expected him to go Harvey Dent at the end.
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anonymousviolin20
July 18, 2022
It is definitely to this movie’s credit that a lot of the plot holes pointed out didn’t bother me during the actual viewing. I might not be so eager to rewatch this movie now though (good fun while it lasted).
Someone pointed out that Kamal should revitalize Marudhanayagam with the profit that’s made from Vikram. I wish he does too, but I am a bit worried that he might focus too much on fitting in with the “mass”/big budget climate and change up the screenplay. I guess Ponniyin Selvan would be a good barometer for whether this would work, since I have heard PS is more focused on the succession drama than it is the action/war scenes (correct me if I’m wrong).
I also don’t know who currently can do justice to the Marudhanayagam character in Tamil. Kamal is too old, as is Vikram imo. Karthi might be able to pull it off. Perhaps Jr NTR if we venture to Telugu.
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KS
July 18, 2022
I don’t think Marudhanayagam will ever see the light of day. It would be a stupid move that could never be worth the effort. I mean, come on. A historical fiction about a Marudhanayagam Pillai converting to Islam to become Mohamad Yusuf Khan, ruling over Madurai, fighting on the side of the British and Arcot nawabs against his neighboring kingdoms, finally falling afoul of his own allies and getting executed.
This is a story rife with dangers at every turn, especially since the history is sketchy, and the writers would need to put their creative liberties to full use. Especially in todays social and political climate, this is a needless suicide mission. I mean, Viswaroopam was besieged by angry protesters! Marudhanayagam would be a sitting duck for lawsuits and protests from every part of every spectrum, right left center.
Even if he somehow fought through, got it released, and it were a good movie, it would receive a heyram-like reception at best (flop/lukewarm at the box office, but lauded by stuffy intellectuals a couple of decades later), but more than that, it would inevitably suffocate Kamal with the kind of legal, financial and gunda trouble that he finally seems to have relatively recovered from. Let the poor man enjoy some success, goodwill and peace. He has a lot of art left, but he’s now too old (not to mention, he’s also an aspiring politician) to get into this zone of avoidable controversies again.
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KS
July 18, 2022
@Madan: Now that @ivan brought it up, brangan’s response to your comments on the Vikram thread did seem uncharacteristic and defensive. When did expressing strong contrarian opinions here become about “beating down into submission” those who think otherwise or being on a “mission” to pull down a film? I caught up with the movie (and the review and comment thread) only recently, else I would have chimed in there itself.
Not just here, even elsewhere on youtube, there are so many passionate takedowns and vicious mockery of anyone who calls out the glaring flaws of Vikram as “boomer uncles” who just don’t “get it”. Like any cinematic universe, this one’s fandom too looks to be going down the toxic way.
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Madan
July 18, 2022
KS: Thanks for the support. But truly I didn’t care then, don’t now. It’s just that with everything that’s going on, my preference nowadays is to simply take myself out of an escalating situation. Films aren’t worth getting personal over. And that was the tone of my response then too. Like, OK if that matters that much to you, then I am going to leave well alone. But yeah, I wasn’t trying to “beat anyone down into submission”, just being my usual exhaustingly argumentative self (though even then, the Vikram thread was a pale shadow of my 2016 thereabouts version, lol). And I make allowance for the fact that occasionally or more than occasionally, that gets on people’s nerves.
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KS
July 18, 2022
@Madan: Getting on peoples’ nerves is all part of the process, very sagajam in arasiyal and podhu vazhkai. But brangan is usually more of a sport, he never enters the ring, and at worst, could be sarcastic. So his response in this case stood out as oddly confrontational. Guess people just really love Vikram!
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Madan
July 18, 2022
KS: I agree, my gut reaction then was like all this time, I didn’t know you were a bigger fan of Kamal than Ilayaraja or Mani. :P. And like I said above, this film seems to have meant a lot to a lot of Kamal fans and there was a pure fourth wall effect in the audience effect where earlier his nth insertion of nallavana kettavana line only elicited chuckles. And this film had the most crude, blunt insertion of that line, delivered with no timing by an actress who probably found the insertion as unconvincing as we did. And yet the whistles, man, the whistles!
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brangan
July 19, 2022
Sai Rajasekar: Thank you for this piece and all the comments it has generated. But my question to you is: Is VIKRAM really a fanboy movie?
Yes, Lokesh is a self-confessed fanboy. But is the FILM a fan film? As a self-confessed Kamal fan, I did not feel so. It has a few odd references to his filmography (like that car number plate), but I would say PETTA is a truer fanboy film. It is stitched together from actual Rajini moments, beginning with the now-legendary “gate opening” bit, referencing THALAPATHY and “Raman aandalum” and so on.
VIKRAM, I feel, stands on its own — as does VV. Again, I don’t think that is a fanboy film, meant to “celebrate” KH. He is very much in character.
LUCIFER, certainly. It is a total “mass” film amd Prithviraj ensured the fanboy-ism shone right through. The narrative etc matters far less than the celebration of the star.
Yes, yes, I know that is what some of you are saying about VIKRAM as well 😃 But both times I saw it, it was very satisfying as a film — meaning it was a proper narrative, with proper performances, and Anirudh’s reverb-filled score drumming up the tension throughout.
I personally would have liked a couple of more silent scenes, like the one where KH has the child on his chest. But no complaints. It is Lokesh’s “purest” film so far.
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vijay
July 19, 2022
“It’s a blockbuster so it worked for the majority, right? Too bad you wasted your resource on this one, I hope your intuition will serve you well next time ”
Huh..i dont bother checking out ‘action’ films of thaatha kamalagaasan in a theater, who looks more like a cross between rajdeep sardesai and ajith these days..the trailer was enough to put me off…. Hence my commiserations to those who rushed for these FDFS or FDFW shows and got ripped off 🙂
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vijay
July 19, 2022
https://www.indiaglitz.com/rajini-kamal-combo-movie-directed-by-lokesh-kanagaraj-latest-update-tamil-news-320731
Ivan, book tickets for this already..boxoffice gold..:-)
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MANK
July 19, 2022
Though I liked the fact that this was a hardcore (Tamil) action picture in all its purity that never breaks character or mood (that’s something even GVM failed to do in VV, with its sporadic tonal shifts, but then again that was a different kind of a film, so it’s not the right analogy). But a pure action film should not be 3 hrs. long. There is a reason why the pure genre classics of 80s like Rambos and Commandos and Die Hards are anywhere between 90 and 120 mins. This one exhausted me. By the last hour the action became totally pointless. All those stabbings, bone crunching, shootings and explosions numbed me into submission. I wonder if this is the formula for big box office these days, because this is exactly how i felt about RRR and KGF as well. All of them kinda beat you into submission with an overdose of action and violence and overblown soundtrack. I am still trying to figure out what was the point of all the action in he last hour. It is just VJS keep sending goons and Kamal dispatching them with all kinds of weapons. The last hour of something like Rambo is also wall-to-wall action, Stallone escapes from captivity, is chased through the jungles, then he comes back rescue POWs and blow up the enemy camp to bits, then goes back to his camp and blows it up too. There is a gradual progression of action taking place, there is forward momentum, and there is a sense of story going forward. There is also variations in how action is staged- first a foot chase, then a helicopter chase etc. Here, everything comes to a standstill and there is absolutely no contrast or flavor to the action scenes, everything looks the same- with editing doing most of the stunt choreography. Compare this with the five action scenes in Mysskin’s thupparivalan- each one staged in a different way, with a different flavor with emphasis on action choreography and not editing or camera moves. I am surprised that Brangan found this very satisfying- i agree that its not that much of a fanboy film as Petta was, but even as a standalone film, i found it very unsatisfying, especially with Kamal giving one of his worst performances as an actor- a fact accentuated by Fahadh’s brilliant performance.
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MANK
July 19, 2022
Like a lot of people i am flabbergasted that this is the film that finally saved Kamal. I always knew that there are a lot of extraneous factors involved in the box office success of a film, and sometimes the intrinsic merit of the film can be of minimal to no value to its success. Marketing , political support, the overblown & fast-paced style of the film and the fact that Kamal was coming back to screen after a long gap seems to have been the chief reasons of its success. So I’m glad that something good came out of it all- for the first time in 20 years Kamal is now totally debt-free. the 150 crs or so of debt he had accumulated over the years – starting with Marudunayagam stalling and Hey Ram going south at the box office – have been completely paid off. Kamal owed money to everyone including Vikram who was yet to be paid for Kadaram Kondan-now he’s paid, it’s ironic that Vikram had to wait for the release of Vikram to get his money :). Now i understand why people are so addicted to the film business. yes they will incur heavy losses, but one blockbuster is all that takes to wipe out a lifetime of debt. For everything he has done for Tamil cinema for the last 40 odd years – he started losing money since his first production “Raajaparvai” , Kamal deserves this success.
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vijay
July 19, 2022
“This one exhausted me. By the last hour the action became totally pointless. I wonder if this is the formula for big box office these days, because this is exactly how i felt about RRR and KGF as well. All of them kinda beat you into submission with an overdose of action and violence and overblown soundtrack. ”
this is the ‘kudutha kaasukku 3 hr full jumbo meals” philosophy which our masala makers follow..nothing new..if you really need a 2-hr or less pure action fest you may need to search for slightly offbeat makers or on OTT..cant think of any right now, maybe Matheswaran comes closest
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Madan
July 19, 2022
MANK: That’s pretty much word to word what I would have written, so that’s quite validating. 🙂 I am not surprised that I didn’t like this movie once I understood exactly what kind of animal it was but with all the talk of Vikram being pure action, I had half questioned whether I remembered my experience of watching Speed, Die Hard or MI movies wrong. Even if I thought No Time To Die was kinda bloated, it still had a lot more variety in the action. Which as you said is exactly what’s missing in Vikram. And the pointlessness of it as it drags on.
I agree with vijay, this is coming out of some bizarre notion of value for money. Probably the same reason why Raja concerts drag on for an interminable 4.5 hours when international concerts don’t usually go beyond 2.5-3 hours. It’s a very transactional way of looking at entertainment but if you made a crisp 1.5-2 hour thriller, a lot of people will feel shortchanged, like the brevity means they didn’t get their money’s worth. At least back in the days of peak Raja /Rahman with five songs per film, the songs could make time fly – either because you enjoyed them or because you were watching on cassette/CD and could press skip :). Now you can’t even do that.
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sanjana
July 19, 2022
The last hour action scenes could have been pruned to make it less boring. But what about paisa vasool for the audience? And the suspense for the lesser mortals as to who will win? A slim chance of the bad guy winning make us wait with bated breath munching the remaining popcorns and heaving a sigh of relief when good wins and the grandchild is saved.
VSY’s family could have been pruned so that we could have identified the family members and even VSY could have remembered all their names, their birthdays instead of remembering one or two names.
Making Kamal’s family ties a mystery. It is irrelevant as Kamal loves his grandchild just like any grandfather does. It will be relevant only if Prabhanjan’s real father surfaces!
FF’s love interest does not want to know the truth like many of us. Headless?
And agent Tina should have been alive like Kamal and FF. She deserved to be alive.
The grandson. He should become a heart specialist and stay away from his grandfather as much as possible. Unfortunatly it is not possible as the expensive watch brand or someone is waiting to eliminate him.
Except for the last half an hour or so, I sort of liked the film. Sometimes even bad films entertain us for some unknown reason. Maybe because of the presence of those actors?
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Srinivas R
July 19, 2022
With Sanjana on Agent Tina being alive. Amar and Agent Tina were the only memorable characters in the movie, why kill one of them.
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The Ghost Who Walks
July 19, 2022
@Madan and others
“Exactly, first he is like a crouching tiger and then suddenly in interval block he becomes tennaatu singam, broadcasting his presence for whole world to see and making a target out of himself.”
My reading of this is that till at that point no one know who he really was. So it made sense to operate in shadows. But the moment Amar tells him he knows that he is the ghost, the cat is out of the bag. Even if he doesn’t remove the mask, he and everyone around him is a target now. Hence the dramatic reveal.
Also, I think he makes i clear in the climax that Prabanjan is his biological son.
I pretty much agree with the other points.
I personally feel that the monstrous nature of the hit is in great deal due to the goodwill Kamal Haasan still commands. I myself have watched and hated Heyram (I was in highschool then), Mahanadhi, Kuruthipunal and so many wonderful movies when they released, only to grow to appreciate them after many years. So, I was more than happy to go out of my way to watch the movie in a bit of ‘sorry I couldn’t appreciate you when it would have mattered’.
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ivan
July 19, 2022
“Ivan, book tickets for this already..boxoffice gold”
Tone down your over excitement, bro. Predicting gold just by reading some news, good lord! I will surely keep you in my prayers if this movie bombs 🙂
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Satya
July 19, 2022
If Rajini and Kamal are truly coming together, my wager is on that most of the audience would leave the hall dissatisfied. This is the true Fire vs Water clash (no offense to team RRR), and I only see calamity but no festivity.
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Madan
July 19, 2022
GhostWhoWalks : I would expect an unmasked para agent to first try to take FF into confidence and strike a deal. Besides the set up was as if FF was led onto Kamal who already had all the equipment to broadcast his identity. So it felt contrived from that perspective, though made sense if the goal was only to set up a marana mass second half.
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ivan
July 19, 2022
Satya: It could work if they come up with scripts like Aval Appadithan (not necessarily melodramatic) but the idea being Kamal and Rajini playing the supporting roles and let the heroine be the protagonist. Or if they could come with some great scripts like Shawshank Redemption (I can see Rajini as ‘Red’). Wishful thinking, but still…
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Satya
July 20, 2022
Ivan: Good ones. I once commented somewhere else on this topic, that I wished to see Rajini and Kamal in a story adapted from The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (though my views changed after I watched Sherlock S3). Imagining them as old men in that story, in our heads was fun though, as Rajini would fail to keep up as Kamal continues to wreak havoc; true to the story, Rajini has to finally give up on his principles and let go. Back then, it felt like a very humanising idea. But now, I wonder if people would watch something like that even with smaller actors across any language.
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Voldemort
July 20, 2022
Dasavatharam disappointed a lot of Kamal’s fans too. But it was a huge success at the BO and helped him fund Vishwaroopam I think. Also he seems to be really happy with this success. In the success meet of Vikram (which was conducted a week after release LOL) he said that this was the first time in 15 years that a film of his had released without any problem and was beaming the whole time. Glad he got this success
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ivan
July 20, 2022
Voldemort: Dasavatharam was a horror show with Kamal trying too hard with 1kg makeups, unnecessary characters and the consistently irritating heroine. In comparison, Vikram seems far better without the Kamal ‘gimmick’ movies pet peeves. I’m an outlier here but it’s heartwarming to see him happy.
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Sai Rajasekar
July 20, 2022
BR: The overa arching emotion running here is why did it have to be this fim that got Kamal his biggest box office success. Obviously, there are lot of things which came around such as the dry spell of star vehicle outings in Kollywood, Kamal’s return and the biggest, the Lokesh factor.
So is it a fanboy movie? Reminded of Atlee’s claim that Bigil was a woman empowerment movie. So these directors shouting from the rooftops about what the movie is doesnt matter unless it’s actually reflected in the movie
What was more frustrating is you liking it😅
Lot of us were happy about CCV and the money it got for Madras Talkies. But you had rightly called it out for its incomplete character development and it being generic
Just like to bring one more movie here which is Bheeshma Parvam directed by Amal Neerad starring Mammootty. Here no one “claimed” its a fanboy sambhavam but it turned out to be 100% one
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ivan
July 20, 2022
No one stands a chance of making a Kamal fanboy movie except Kamal himself B-)
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Voldemort
July 20, 2022
Ivan : Haha, yes. What I was trying to say is – he followed up a Dasa with a Vishwaroopam. So let’s not write him off yet.
What happened to Sabash Naidu?
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Nappinai (@Nappinai2)
July 21, 2022
To me it seemed like that the 67 member family was there to contrast with the Ghost who seems to have no real family.
I liked the film, didn’t have any big complaints against it. Unlike some other comments on this thread, I thought the Tina character arc was going to play out the way it did. You know there is more to her when she catches the cup with incredible reflexes and such side kick characters do end up dying often. Some of the first half sequences, I thought was sort of explained by Kamal’s God complex dialogue about him setting the rules or determining the outcomes in the jungle.
On a related note, I want to know what’s with everyone dying to save the child or while trying to kill it. Is the child some metaphor of hope/ society or some derivative of the older Vikram or is he a chosen one like Harry Potter?
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Kaushik Bhattacharya
August 14, 2022
All the handwringing around why was this such a big success, why did BR like it, how can it be called a 100% Kamal film etc is really amusing.
I can understand some people saying that they didn’t like the film because either the plot/narrative didn’t work for them, the action set pieces were not innovative enough, and/or VJS as a villain not having enough depth etc but questioning box office success or trying to dispute whether it’s a Kamal film is surely pointless?
Dhoom 3, PK and 3 Idiots were all fairly crappy films imo (and the latter two were insufferably preachy as well) but they rank amongst Aamir Khan’s biggest blockbusters. The same with Dabbang and Bodyguard for Salman Khan. Unwatchable imo but humongous hits. If only universally acknowledged “good cinema” were to succeed at the box office then most people would soon not be able to afford to make films.
As for whether it’s a 100% Kamal film, that’s a subjective view isn’t it and each fan of his (or groups of fans) will have a different definition. For some, a Virumandi is it, for some the Crazy Mohan comedies, for some a Kuruthipunal (and I’m sure there’s loads more). You can make a flawless case for Vikram being one and an equally good case against.
From all the comments I read, BR was just saying that he gets that some people didn’t like it, saying it repeatedly wasn’t going to change his views on it as a Kamal film or a genre piece. I don’t think he said anything more scathing than that?
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