My first review on a tamil movie. I usually don’t watch regional language movies, only english movies. So my view about a tamil movie might be slightly different, so please take this as a warning message.
We are used to Magnificently made movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, Jurrasic Park and now its the turn of director Shankar - its called Anniyan.
Few questions before you watch this movie:
Have you seen Matrix 2?
Have you seen Spiderman?
Have you seen Mudhalvan?
Have you read Sydney Sheldon’s Tell me your dreams?
Do you like Vikram’s acting?
If your answer to any of these questions is No, it ok, you can spend the money in watching the movie! Vikram’s acting is pretty good. Starts with over acting and slowly sets down the pace (or may be we are getting used to it!). Prakash Raj, I guess we are getting used to his acting style. Not much change. Vikram’s acting one particular scene at the end is an applause winner. Other than that nothing much to contribute. Sada looks good, but the western outfits only fits her body not her face.
Story: Vikram is a person who is affected by a mental disorder called ’’Multiple Personality or the split personality’’. He is split into three characters:
Ambi alias Ashley Peterson (Tell me your dreams)
R-E-M-O alias Alette Peters
Anniyan alias Toni Prescott
I have not personally read ’’Tell me your dreams’’ but I have listened to the whole story (Courtesy my roommate Dr.Pravin, who is a superb story teller!). I didn’t find much of the difference in the story. Just that the cause was more of Shankar’s usual, clean the country of dirt and dirty politics/corruption. All fights are absolute imitation of Matrix, and the one in the Karate hall is the exact copy of Matrix 2 ’s fight sequence where Neo fights Agent Smith just after meeting Oracle for the first time in that episode. One more fight sequence is a trial of making the spiderman a reality. Music is good. Song sequences are good. I saw it in Prarthana Drive-in Theatre in ECR, Chennai. Open air, so can’t comment much about the sound quality and stuff. The movie is projected as a Hi-Fi movie, but has miserably failed to stand up to the expectation. You can watch it once, if you don’t expect much from it. Not a waste of 3 hours, but sure is a waste of 100 bucks.
I was expecting creativity in the story at some point in the movie, couldn’t find much. All reasons which one personality gave on why he is and how he gets the money and stuff looks much of just a ’’made-up-reason’’ than a reality reason. The director has just tried to justify verbally these reason, than actually putting it in action. Particularly, when Nazar (the Doc!) is examining Ambi, Anniyan comes out, and when he sees a rose, he becomes R-E-M-O. Fine, mind can change that fast, but how did the hair style change? R-E-M-O is a Ramp model it seems: how did he become so famous in such a short time. How were his parents managing his schedule? Anniyan makes a website https://anniyan.com from which he finds people logging in complaints. How did that website become so popular in such a short time. Some Google alliance?
Best was the was the whole story is lying on the back of Tell me your Dreams. The ending is even the same. The Killer character will eventually be off the mind and everyone will think that the person is normal again. Anniyan: He kills again, which shows that the personality is still not gone. TMYD: There is one song ’’that personality’’ sings,
’’All around the mulberry bush,
the monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought ’twas all in fun,
Pop! goes the weasel.
which is the last sentence of this book.
The director should first understand that the movies and books which are available to him are available to the general public in tamilnadu.
Too big a review, too much to read. Hope you liked it. Please criticize as much as possible.