Oh my god!!!
That was what I was thinking with my mouth open, as I saw the preview of Anniyan earlier. Now after 2 weeks the movie was finally released and I managed to get the tickets courtesy of my close friend. I was late in entering the theater and missed the first 5 minutes or so..
anyway abt the movie, it is abt Vikram a tamil brahmin, who insists on rules being observed, no matter how trivial. In his childhood, his sister was electrocuted (shown at the end of the movie), due to a chain of events typical in India. He is in love with nandini, but is afraid to tell so due to his nature. He is such a guy that he gives the love letter he had written to nandini to her parents so that they can read it and if PROPER, could give it to her!!!
Anyway, as he sees the law being violated so openly, he begins to get frustrated and finally develops an alter ego(Multiple personality) named anniyan. The hair tied as a kuduma gets transformed into dreadlocks, he gets superhuman strength and his voice gets a low pitch that can be used for sub woofer advertisements.In his frustration to open his heart to nandini he develops another personality named REMO. A stylish(?), guy with a strange english accent that bowls nandini over.
The anniyan personality comes to existence when he witnesses various crimes like not helping an injured guy bleeding to death, or providing bad food in the railways etc... He gives punishments in various styles described in a purana and leaves a jumbled sanskrit word for it. The cops are clueless initially, but slowly traces anniyan back to ramanujam. Meanwhile there are lots of gruesome murders( Stampede by buffalos, Frying in hot oil, draining ones blood using leeches etc!) Just before he was arrested, nandini discovers, with the help of psychiatrists about the disease. After he was arrested, the cop gives ambi a good beating and thats when he transforms into .....anniyan (of course). Theres a rather good scene when he switches b/w the crying ambi and the growling anniyan. finally he is produced to the court and found not guily. the movie ends with nandini marrying Vikram in a normal stage, only to kill a drunkard in the train journey at the last shot.
The plot of the movie, though much used in western flicks(Spiderman for ex) is a novelty in india with inspirations from Indian, Muthalvan etc . The direction is good, with excellent camera angles but the freeze frame using multiple cameras was used a bit too much. The occasional humour hits the mark, dialogues lead to applauses in the gallery. And really brilliant acting by the whole cast However the action sequences are very poor, most of it lifted it straight from the matrix trilogy and even the mummy returns!. There seems to be no knowledge of physics when people fall or jump with the effect of rope clearly distinguishable. The songs are also very poor except for a slow track in the beginning. the lyrics really suck, even for tamil standards. the first stanza of one song ends with the following words nokkiya(l) mafiya cappoccino coffiy(a) sophiya what the hell was that supposed to mean??? Concluding, You just might enjoy this if u leave ur cynicism aside and watch the movie
Pros : Acting, camera work, somewhat different plot, the ’’rapid transformation sequence ’’ at the end
cons:action seq, songs