Aayirathil Oruvan is not a movie but Epic.With Fictitious data Selvaragavan has made bold attempt to push the Tamil cinema to next level. Selva’s effort can be described in 2 ways: Copied or Inspired.
I would take the "Inspired" way, as many of the scenes in the movie has its influence from a lot of Hollywood movies like Mckenna’s Gold, Indiana Jones, Gladiator, 300, Mummy, Last Samurai and other adventure movies.
We have seen this earlier in Pudhupetai which had inspiration from Godfather. I still feel any Indian director shud be more than courageous to handle such a script.
I m sure Selva must have watched almost all foreign movies in adventure genre.But that really doesn’t matter, Whats important is, Has he convinced people that this film is a must watch or atleast worth a watch?. I feel he has done enough for that.He has kept upto the expectations.
Story:
Major part of the story revolves around Reema, Karthik, Andrea.(in the order of importance).Reemma does the role of Angilena(Lara Croft) in Tomb Raider, Karthik get the Brendan Fraser role in Mummy(and Mummy Returns) but is used more as a comedian. Andrea takes the role of beautiful archaeologist. Reema in search of the lost treasure. Andrea in search of her lost Dad.
Karthik with his cute parithiveeran style is caught up between these girls.Its about how these three cross the hurdles and reach the place, what they find, what happens to each of them.Andrea’s importance fades as the movie moves to the end. Story keeps u thrilled for the most part of the movie though I accept that it drags in few scenes especially in the 2nd half. As this is an epic story, selva himself found it hard to fit his movie in the 3 hours timeline.So I don want to write a detailed review here.
Selvaragavan is known for his depiction to minute levels, as we hav seen in his past movies like 7G, pudhupettai, etc. But the depiction of reality has crossed borders in few places where family audience were not comfortable, this could have been avoided.
In this review I have maintained a Secret till this point, its about the another important character in the movie who has put in all his experience to add weight to this movie. All cheers to Parthiban’s acting.
There are a few scenes where we will have to make our own assumptions especially with the ancient chola Tamil we hardly understand whats happening. Given for the last 20 mins and gladiator scene Karthik didn’t have much. If he can be a gladiator he could have fought like Achilles in the final war.
There are few questions to which Selva himself will find hard to answer:
If people are starving for food, I don’t know how its possible for them to enjoy the gladiator fights?. That’s really funny. He has tried to rope in almost all good scenes from most of the movies he watched (I mean gladiator, 300, etc).
G.V Prakash has played a very important role in making every scene of the movie look grand by his rocking BGM. But few scenes which required emotional BGM had unsynchin rock.Graphics has been really good for Indian standards except for few things like camel and fishes.
Majority of the movie is shot in the Dark.No complains with the cinematography.
Taking into account the time, money and resources spent, Selva cud have fine tuned to make it a better one. I appreciate Selva’s effort by introducing a new genre to Indian cinema.