Where are all the greys?

Raghavan, the newest cop and bad guy flick to hit the box office has certainly hit it hard...

Though the trailors were feeble and left a lot asking, a Kamal starrer after a long gap, and the newest next door girl Kamalinee romancing him, was enough for a die hard fan to succumb to the temptation...

Titles begin and a song showing the rough and tough, honest and afraid of none cop in uniform and surprisingly smart 3-piece suits (must have been undercover..aka Bond!) with not to forget the Aviator glasses shoots, jumps from 2 storeys ( actually its computer edited) and wades(literally...with all that extra weight) into the first scene..some Dhulpet Goonda willing to pay Rs. 5 lakhs for his eye, all filmed by ace ( i mean amateur) Cinematographer Ravi Varman.

The script, direction and even the so called hi-fi stunts and effects left me wondering whether the crew actually thought they were doing the right thing or was it a planned out strategy to waste the producer's Black money..

On another line of thought, maybe they thought the mercifully average Harris Jayraj music along with the famed Kamal would pull the crowds to the movie and an anticipation of his powerful performance would keep them sitting..but sadly, even the anticipation could not carry it off..

15-20 minutes into the movie, we witnessed a gory murder and an even dumber mode of investigation, the scene being saved by Prakash Raj's grief and loss, which at least met expectations in terms of acting skills...

By now, am done with my double choco cookie and coffee and waiting for the plot to develop..
Predictably enough, it does in the form of a song and another murder, this time Prakash Raj and his wife too in a different setting, saat samundar paar... and under the emotional pressure he is in, he manages to help out a damsel in distress..and falls in love with her...

After which, the bad guys (who are by then introduced as psychopathic serial killers, through a few scenes of gross murders and rapes, in which apna hero ka ability to be a Sherlock is displayed..) who are successfully on the run, commit a few more gruesome murders and take away the heroine( how innovative ??)!

Now for the climax...and before I go further, an apology about the spoilers, to all those who wanted to see it yet, and did not know what the movie was about...
So, back to the climax...a few terribly crafted scenes and the villians die and the hero saves the heroine and a few months later they get married to live happily ever after...like we did not know!

Applause...and we thankfully get out of the theatre..!

Hate to defame a movie with such potential, Kamal Hassan, Gautam, Tamil and Telugu release, and Kamal Hassan, but though am not against simple cop flicks, or distinct black and white Masala movies which are entertaining because of the songs and some always used cliched romantic angles, and are different only because of a undercover Mahesh Babu or a moustached Venkatesh or even Die Hard (all the four movies!) for that matter...what hurts me the most here is the potential that was wasted...

Are we trying to take back Cinema a decade back or don't we have any more subjects that an actor of his calibre can take up??
How will any art progress if we move about in the same circles repeating the same thing from the same angle?
Variants of the same thing are fine, as long as there is a change in the angle or the perception with which it becomes an entirely independent entity...but something of this sort..not acceptable at all...

Hate to rant about obvious things, but if it was so obvious, why do we keep seeing the same wine in the same bottle just with a different label??
How can we go about ignoring such a monstrosity?? I for one cannot and hence this..

Agreed there are millions of other things that would make ranting worthwhile but cannot digest the fact that an actor who allows so many controversies to surround him and doesn't get affected by all the gossips his personal life say it is..who could go on doing all of it and more and get away with it, because of the work he does, ended up doing this..

It's just a movie, I know, but to me it's a personal insult...but maybe it was my judgement all along...ok here is where I go into introspecting me..hence it goes to another layer and another place..

For now,
Namaste!
" :-( "