Sura (Vijay) is a fisherman living in a fishing hamlet, Yazh Nagar, with his mother. He rescues a rich spoilt girl, Purnima (Tamannaah), who is committing suicide in the sea as her dog is missing. The two fall in love. Meanwhile, the evil minister (Dev Gill) wants to grab the land where the hamlet lies. He has the huts of the fisherfolk burnt down and then pretends them to be sympathetic to them by compensating them and shifting them elsewhere. However, Sura thwarts him and challenges him that in six months he will have concrete houses up there for his people. The battle lines are drawn…
OK, it’s taken for granted. You cannot really review a Vijay starrer keeping logic, cinematic aesthetics, heavy duty content or coherence in the screenplay as guidelines. And sure enough, this film has none of those things. What you can judge his films is on how well they succeed in their endeavour to make you leave it all behind and get entertained with their items or masalas. Sura is a miserable failure on this front, bringing nothing fresh at all to the table and leave alone all the deja vu of earlier Vijay starrers, it smacks of a baaad 1980s film. Even the main issue of the villain wanting to take over the fishing basti and moving the poor fishermen out of their homes is as old as the hills and at least two and a half decades too late.
Nothing works be it the hero’s introduction from the sea, the idiotic romantic track, the action scenes or even Vadivelu’s comedy, which again has to have him being beaten up repeatedly! Even Vijay’s great dancing talent is used but sporadically as is the odd punchy dialogue he gives the villain. You’d think a little more thought process might have gone into the film and its supposed highlights, being as it is Vijay’s 50th film. Sadly, the film is as unimaginative and cliched as one can get and suffers from a total lack of directorial control.
Vijay normally at least enjoys himself with all his silly antics on screen but he seems to simply go through the motions and lacks energy on screen in this one. Maybe, all the repetition is getting to him. Tamannaah is the perfect bimbette heroine and as insipid as ever. I don’t think she has ever been styled so badly. Vadivelu is, well Vadivelu and he does give you the odd chuckle or two. Dev Gill goes through the entire film contorting his face and hamming it up, looking quite idiotic in the process.
The technicalities too are tacky. The camerawork often reminds you of the worst of the 1980s with some awful and overuse of the zoom lens. Mani Sharma’s music is none too memorable and neither is the choreography and picturization of the songs, which, as mentioned, fail to utilise Vijay’s dancing talents and what’s worse, bring the narrative to a grinding halt. The sound design is loud and obvious and again, unimaginative.
All in all, Sura is quite unendurable and a film that even the most die hard Vijay fan is likely to find extremely tough to sit through, leave alone enjoy.
Tamil, Drama, Action, Color