Villu

Villu is easily one of the worst films I have viewed in recent times. This awful rip-off from the Hindi film Soldier (1998), itself not a very good film, leaves you speechless considering the cast, technical crew and the money spent. Director Prabhu Deva, while making Villu, said he was attempting to make a James Bond film in Tamil. Well, barring a couple of thrills, Villu has neither the humour, style or sophistication nor the bevy of beauties one associates with the Bond films. It is plain rotten.

OK, I know I am watching a Vijay film. I don’t expect a serious, content or character driven logical film. I am prepared to throw logic and even my brains aside for watching an entertainer. But that entertainer should have some coherenence while putting its items together and keep me enthralled. Villu fails here and fails big time. What’s worse is that barring a stray sequence, the items be it comedy, romance or action – they are not very appealing either. The film is loud, crass and non-happening. It leaves you totally uninvolved so you don’t really care about any of the characters or the film’s so called twists and turns either.

Villu goes like this. Pugazh (Vijay) is a general do-gooder who is actually on a mission to catch JD (Prakash Raj) and his colleagues with help from a police inspector, Joseph (Manoj K Jayan). At a wedding, Pughazh meets Janavi (Nayanthara) and after initial clashes, they fall in love. It turns out that Janavi is JD’s daughter and takes Pugazh to Germany to meet her father. Of course, this was part of Pugazh’s mission to use Janavi and make her fall for him to reach her father and his cohorts, who in their early army days had betrayed the country and framed their honest and brave colleague, Major Saravanan (Vijay again), killing him brutally…

If the main storyline is clunky, Vadivelu’s comedy track is simply one of the worst I have seen and solely depends on beating the man and humiliating him in as many ways as possible including have a computer generated cow kick him where it hurts and then shit on him. The sequence of him arrested as a chimpanzee at the airport simply leaves you gob smacked. As does the bizzare climax where Vijay rises from the dead after being buried under the sand. Really!

Another thing I couldn’t quite understand was the need to plug in regionalism and the great ‘Tamizh’ factor. Each time Major Saravanan beats the baddies you have a refrain on the song playing in the background saying He is a Tamil (Tamizh?) fighting for the Motherland. Good grief!

So does anything really work in this film? I suppose one can’t fault Vijay’s sincere efforts to do what he can with the script and it does look like he at least was enjoying himself. He is in his element as always in the dances, no doubt, but ultimately the film does him in and his act as Major Saravananan is quite unconvincing. Nayanthara has little to do but flaunt herself and even that is done crudely. Manoj K Jayan and Geetha as the woman who brings Vijay up at the behest of his mother, manage to bring some semblence of respectability into the film while Prakash Raj hams till it hurts. Ranjitha is adequate.

Technically, cinematographer Ravi Varman does strive to give the film a polish it didn’t deserve while Devi Sri Prasad’s music is loud and more beat-oriented rather than melodious but is admittedly catchy in places. However, there are far too many songs in the film and in a film of this sort where each song is really an item and not part of the storyline, they do nothing for the film except bring the narrative to a grinding halt. Still, Vijay’s introduction song is well picturised even if Khushboo’s appearance in it fails to lift it any higher but the Mummy Daddy song is vulgar as hell in its writing as well as in its filming.

All in all, simply unbearable.

Tamil, Action, Comedy, Thriller, Color