Who’s ’’Abhay’’ ?? Yeah, u guessed it, its none other than producer S.Thanu, who has taken the pains and weighed the gains before putting, if not all, maybe most of his money into the strange, crazy, and techno-loaded ’’ABHAY’’. Sure its an expensive movie, but the money has been spent for the wrong purpose. The movie, supposed to be path-breaking and Breath-taking is ultimately VAGUE and boring after some time, confounding and confusing the layman who expects nothing but some good songs, fights, emotions, comedy, and more of such stuff. Kamal Haasan’s dream project, has ultimately proved to be a nightmare!!!!
Abhay is Certainly path-breaking in one area: TECHNOLOGY. I am sure no other movie made to date in India has used such equipments and tried such various techniques to make the scenes and action sequences on par with HOLLYWOOD. In this respect, the effort has largely succeeded, no doubt about that. Extensive use of Motion Control Cameras, and Animation to move the story forward has been experimented for the first time ever(I feel) in any movie ever. And the fight scenes too have been executed with a lot of effort and it shines through, like showing the two Kamal’s fighting in the same frame and showing their movements linearly. Also, the use of GRAPHICS adds to the marvellous work done by the people behind the scenes. Specially, the scene in the prison when Kamal and Raveena come to visit Abhay is really worth a mention.
But, but, but, let me add, ALL these pluses cannot make up for the biggest MINUS point in the whole film, which completely ECLIPSES the above mentioned praises, and that is the story and screenplay, also credited to Kamal Haasan himself. While the story maintains a grip on the audience for the first hour or so, as soon as Abhay escapes the prison, the grip on the plot loosens and the screenplay goes haywire. The rest of the movie is as predictable as it can get.
The story is wafer thin and can be explained in a line, that is : ’’Abhay hates women because he was tortured by his step-mother in his childhood and escapes prison to kill Raveena, who he feels is gonna ruin Vijay’s life.’’
The screenplay, after his escape from prison, concentrates more on his crazy thinking and imaginary situations like his trip to the theatre and encounter with Manisha in her room, hence diverting from the main storyline and putting off the audience. The cartoon sequences too are horrible and only stick out like a sore thumb.
The whole of second half concentrates on how he tries to kill Raveena and how Vijay rescues her, and gets more and more boring as the climax nears. The climax is the sequence which has taken maximum effort to make but is the most illogical and impossible to believe. Abhay who was originally out to rescue his bro, is now hell bent on killing him!!!!
The movie is elevated by the lavish production values, AMAZINGLY SUPERB cinematography by Tirru, good sound design, CHILLING background score by Mahesh, some hummable songs and that head-twitching action by Abhay.
Kamal appears in every scene of the movie, and done a pretty good job as Vijay as well as Abhay, flexing his muscles as required. Raveena is used more as a item and not given many scenes to perform. Manisha is TOTALLY wasted and the story could have done even without her part.
All in all, ABHAY is a failed attempt at making something different and Kamal owes an apology to the producer and the audience for confusing them. Go for it just for the technical chutzpah.....others may as well avoid it.