Movie: Anjaan
Director: N. Lingusamy
Cast: Suriya, Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Manoj Bajpayee, Vidyut Jammwal, Dalip Tahil, Soori, Brahmanandam, Asif Basra and Murali Sharma
Rating: **
We don’t see the actor Suriya we’ve seen in films such as “Pithamagan”, “Perazhagan”, “Kaaka Kaaka” and “Rakht Charitra” anymore. He’s not dead. He’s probably gone on a sabbatical. And the Suriya we see now is a star. He’s actor Suriya’s alter ego, his second self, constantly trying to spearhead the star cinema culture in Tamil filmdom. As a result, in “Anjaan”, we witness the battle between Suriya the star and Suriya the actor. Incidentally, the film features Suriya in a double role. One’s a star and the other is the actor. But since this is star cinema, Suriya the star, obviously, is given more importance and eventually wins the battle.
Suriya once didn’t hesitate to experiment. He didn’t mind playing a buck-toothed, dark, ugly hunchback Chinna in “Perazhagan” or a con man in “Pithamagan” or the grim police officer in “Kaaka Kaaka”. The Suriya we saw in these films may not have been a star then (or maybe he was), but he was equally loved by audiences as much as he’s today. Isn’t that what actors really wish for at the end of the day, especially when most say they are incomplete without the love of their fans?
“Anjaan” comes after Suriya’s recent blockbuster “Singam 2”, and the makers were under the assumption that the success streak will automatically continue sans any effort. So, they present a gangster revenge drama, mostly inspired from several Indian gangster films. It’s completely shot in Mumbai with a host of Bollywood actors who are excruciatingly awful in their roles. There’s a love track. Samantha romances Suriya, dances with him in a bikini and the crowd goes berserk. There are punch dialogues and they’re repeated in every fight scene. There’s comedy too, but it hardly evokes laughter.
Look at the irony of Tamil cinema and it’s pathetic. Films here can’t have many dialogues in Hindi because audiences won’t understand. When a film is set in Mumbai, and it’s about gangsters, Hindi speaking actors from Bollywood are chosen because they are apt for the milieu, which I think makes sense. But they are not allowed to dub in their own voices as they can’t speak Tamil. So when these actors appear in the film, you get the feeling that you’re watching a Hindi dubbed film in Tamil. This is precisely why Manoj Bajpayee, one of the finest actors in Indian cinema, always looks like a clown in Tamil films.
Vidyut Jammwal was last seen in Tamil film “Thuppakki”. He played a cold-blooded terrorist. The best part of his role was that his dialogues were in Hindi with a voiceover in Tamil. It worked when the film was watched by audiences. He was accepted and appreciated. It was not the same case in “Anjaan”.
These are the kind of small compromises commercial cinema directors should be willing to take. Lingusamy is reluctant to change and he will probably learn from this film why the formula he used few years ago doesn’t work anymore. You still can’t be hoping for a film to do well because it features a star. But Lingusamy is an intelligent filmmaker. He understands art-house cinema, supports off-beat films, otherwise he wouldn’t have distributed films such as “Goli Soda” and “Inam”. Maybe it’s his second self, the alter ego, which controls the director in him, and that explains why he makes garbage like “Anjaan”.
Suriya gives an earnest performance in “Anjaan”, and there’s absolutely no doubt it. But he’s let down by a weak script, terrible performances by the rest of the cast and an extremely lengthy narrative. He should stop living in the world of star cinema, exit from it and do films that will do justice to his potential.
First published in IANS
