'I' is exhaustively long and most of the times unnecessarily. Shankar tried to spin a beauty and the beast emotion into a revenge thriller. But, it was rarely a thriller. The screenplay and shots were most of the time less than ordinary. Shankar failed to bring in the entertainment value that his revenge thrillers usually use as carriers. Not only was the story very much predictable, till the very end, but little often brings up the viewers interest.
Now, the positives of the movie other than the obvious Vikram, was it's make up and the song locations which was the primary source of expense for the producer. Songs and locations can be understood, but what Shankar has to understand is that unlike his previous ventures with VFX extravaganzas, make up doesn't peak a movie experience for more than a couple of seconds. They make for good photographs, though. People watch the make-up, marvel it, and then go back to the screenplay. Credits are due for the excellent make up done by Weta workshop, but unless you have an extraordinary story to go along with, audience don't get their worth of time.Except for the songs cinematography seemed ordinary. Editor will have to take the blame for the extra length.
Coming to performances, Vikram does what he does best- Act. His local body builder act was not only good for the physique he had to put on, but for the accent and characteristics he infused in it. His little gimmick of imitating Kamal put me in a gleeful excitement. Amy Jackson had to be a model, and nothing much. Santhanam was his usual, but Shankar who used Vivek in these kind of roles before had it more convincing then, with scenes that had a message in comedy scenes. Suresh Gopi made it up in the last for the ordinary role he had otherwise. The rest of the cast just went with the silly script.
The story had a great potential, like all Shankar's socially relevant movies do. But, the was no charisma at all this time. Why so? Is a question to be answered by Shankar alone. He had all the ingredients : music, action, romance, cinematography. But none of it had the punch of his earlier attempts. Nor the emotion.
The music by A R Rahman was on the hit charts for a couple of months now. But personally, I wasn't impressed there either. 'Pookale' stood out for me both in terms of audio and visualization. The stunt department is also another area that dragged their stay on screen. There were quite some fights, but they went on till it bored the normal audiences. I wasn't sure if there was anything that we haven't seen before.
I have always been a huge fan of Shankar for the way he made commercial films : messages, entertainment, technology and great music. He has tried the same thing again, but somewhere the whole thing collapsed equally in every department.
