Movies generally glorify the image of a hero. A Hero is found to come out successful with the fall of the villain. The strength and glory of a Heroic character is generally scaled with that of the villain. A villain portrayed to be very powerful, very crude and very gruesome will double up the Hero image as ultimately he succeeds the much powerful villain. So it’s very important that the character of the villain is portrayed well in a movie. Over the years we have seen some great performances form actors portraying negative characters. Here I give my list of memorable performances in Tamil Cinema. As always I repeat by saying that these are only from the movies that I saw, and my personal favorites. I am not restricting myself to five, ive listed my favorites.
Prakash Raj in Ghilli:
This has to be the best. If there was one character which got the applaud and praise as much the hero character got, then this must be it. He was just so cool portraying this character. He added a touch of humor and added a new dimension to the negative role. This character brought him loads of praise and has to be one his best till date. When he says ‘I love you ‘, ‘Chellamey’, ‘Athellam nee yen solre, nee athellam solla koodathu’ doesn’t he make us smile and clap for him.
Nasser in Kuruthipunal / Devar Magan:
It was hard to choose between these tow performances, so ended up selecting both. He is similar to Naseerudin Shah in bollywood, would suit any role you give to him and would end up perfecting it. These two roles were very powerful ones. One a very stubborn terrorist and another a very cunning, venomous villager. The interrogation scenes in Kuruthipunal were just exceptional. Similarly the high voltage confrontation with Kamal in devar magan was memorable too.
Ramya Krishnan in Padayappa:
If there was anyone to hog the limelight as equal as Rajinikanth in his movie, then it has to be the Neelamabri character in Padayappa, portrayed by Ramya. The characters great success was that right from the start of the movie till its end, the cunningness and crudeness of the character never faded away even a bit. Rather it became more and more powerful. Ramya’s husky voice adding on to the character made it even more appealing.
Pasupathy in Virumandi:
Kamal Hassan has this uncanny knack of identifying rare talents and bringing the best out of them. Pasupathy was one such kind. He is a talented actor with very expressive eyes. He was just so apt and natural playing the baddie in the movie. His body language was very good. He proved to match Kamal hassan in each sequence involving them. This talented actor should be properly used and also be choosy enough to select different roles rather than being aloud and being monotonous.
Rajinikanth in Moondru Mudichu:
This is one is from the olden days of Rajinikanth, when he was donning the negative roles. One of my personal favorites. Under the direction of Balachander he would have excelled in the negative role. The scene where he pushes Kamal Hassan into the lake and just rows off without helping him is one memorable scene. M.S. Viswanathans Music and Voice adding value to the scene. This was one of his matured performances very early in his career. Sometimes feel that Tamil Industry has lost the most talented villain ever, but never mind he has succeeded leaps and bounds as a hero.
Raghuvaran in Puriyadha Puthir:
He set a bench mark for psycho roles with this performance of his. His voice modulation and dialogue delivery was a revelation. This one had the most famous ‘I know. I know’ scene where he repeats the same phrase for about 40 times or so. with different expressions. The scene was talked off for several years. Till date he remains one of the top villain actors in south Indian cinema.
Kalabhavan Mani in Gemini:
This man is a very talented actor. He showed his variety of skills of mimicry in this movie. He brought a fresh approach to the villain role. He was equally humorous and was the main reason for the cheerful moments in this movie. It was some debut for Kalabhavan Mani in Tamil cinema. He mimed everything possible right from an elephant to a monkey in this movie. Again it is sad doing a lot of films with very substandard roles.
Mansoor Ali Khan in Captain Prabhakar:
It was a dream debut for Mansoor Ali Khan. He got rave reviews for his performance as the Sandal wood smuggler Veerapathran in the movie. His character was compared with that of the Gabbar Singh character of ‘Sholay’, such was his performance. As the merciless villain, he was just perfect and the character looked tailor made for him. Very few get such good characters on their debut and he grabbed the opportunity with two hands.
I was just left thinking of some more characters which would be my favorites. Hope to continue this list when I get a few more. Please give in your valuable comments, it’s always welcomed.