In the lines of Kakka Kakka, Gautham Menon has given this time, a more gruesome, violent and almost a sequel of KK. The brighter side is that VV entertains to most part, sticks to reality and keeps us guessing when it matters the most.
DCP, Raghavan (Kamal) gets into pursuit of the killer(s) when his superior Arokiaraj’s (Prakashraj) daughter is brutally murdered. Arokiayaraj and his wife heavy-heartedly move to New York wanting to forget the tragedy. But, what starts as a homicide turns out to be a serial killing spree that not only costs lives of Arokiyaraj’s family but even threatens Raghavan’s existence and his newly found lady love.
Opening scenes scared the hell out of me not because of any violence but because of Kamal meeting a gangster all alone and blurting out typical Vijayakanth dialogues. Thankfully, this is just a stunt to grab our attention in the beginning and then things get settle down to realisms. However, the build up song that follows is an age old formula to characterize Kamal’s ruthlessness towards outlaws.
The background is set at Chennai-New York-Chennai, where the scenes at Chennai are mostly fast, gruesome and thrilling while New York sequences has a touch of romance, more of plot development, suspense revelations and a bit slower than the former. But both balance the composition of the film which would otherwise have become a single dimensional track-the-killer flick.
Kamal’s investigations in Chennai are the best of the lot. It is methodological and normally paced. In fact, these are the scenes that are with minimal editing gimmicks (which anyway peeks into the later half). VV heavily resembles “Red Dragon” in the first half (Kamal using the same technique of recording and playing back his narration of investigation, a family massacre etc) but the second half proves other ways. The scenes involving Kamalini getting kidnapped and her death consciously resemble KK and could be accepted as a tribute.
My expectations were higher when I heard that Gautham Menon is making a film with Kamal. But I was also worried about the picturing technique he would deploy for this film. As I have mentioned in some of my reviews, the MTV style of editing in KK was novel at that time but was abused to the full extent by many films thereafter. In fact, I have reservations for this style. The reason being obvious- you don’t know what the hell is happening in the screen and you couldn’t enjoy the granular details built into a scene. Despite his assurance he gave in magazines, Gautham Menon had irritatingly stuck to this technique again.
The picturing is the last thing that I would praise in this movie. Though, in the first half Gautham tries to camouflage it by dissolve-over scenes, he gives up and pitches into the MTV style editing again. There are at times, when dissolve-over and cut-to scenes are required to show transition of time, but I wonder how could that be used on most part of a movie? Though VV uses far less amount of this technique than KK, it’s no excuse for novelty. There is no time to enjoy a scene fully before it gets cut to (or dissolve) into another.
Directors are either biting on more than what they can chew (by including too many events that they have no time to open or close scenes) or too pre-occupied with songs and fights (which are widely misunderstood as a replacement for decent plot development and characterization) This reminds me of Barathiraja, who showcases excellent technique by gradually opening a scene, building it up and while closure, parallely mixing with next scene. Gone are the days of such aesthetic picturing (Sigh!)
Its long time since we saw Kamal in his normal appearance. He appears simple, broader along the waist and brings out a dignified performance. But VV is not for Kamal fans. We could hardly feel his typical spine-chilling screen presence, trivial facial expressions (esp. in crucial scenes like Kamalini in deathbed and the climax) and his inherent one-liners (like in Alavandhaan). He appears plastic, blurts out dialogues, smiles now and then and shoots criminals. As a whole, his character lacks dimension
Jyothika brings out the best in her these days but unfortunately it’s almost end of her career. She matches Kamal in dignity. Kamalini scores well especially in the scene where Kamal expresses his love. She deserves a few more scenes than what was allotted.
Harris Jayaraj nowadays, has become predictive. His songs are as usual magical and instant hit while the background score is pretty childish and outlandish. While the director has put in a lot of effort to make the film look serious, the background music spoils the seriousness. Harris, its time to have a look at this area.
VV is a welcome back thriller but, it relies too much on editing gimmicks to artificially generate thrills which actually hinder it. For Kamal, there nothing much to feed and it’s just an impasse.