G.A.T.O.M the ATOM

A portion in the Blog below was quite controversial - I got some calls demanding further information. It has been edited now. Glad to know that my dear friends are as sharp as ever. ;)

OK, My Dad called me and asked if I was free to go to Vettaiyadu Velaiyadu (VV). I was pleasantly surprised that tickets were available and so replied in the affirmative.

Come Saturday, I had a wonderful day with my friends, and was looking forward to seeing the movie. Predictably, there was a jam at the entrance of the Theatre but we managed to reach in time to see the start of the movie. The caption seemed to be "Another Episode in a Police Officers Life" - GROAN, not KK-II.

It opened quite predictably, a Goonda, with streaked hair(this is the Goonda season of movies) speaks on the cell phone and talks left and right - left and right crap.

Predictably, next scene - ENTRY BY KAMAL HASSAN. He does the usual talk, and finally bashes up all the guys there. Usual breaking of glass, twists and turns etc etc etc. OK fine, so what’s the point? Oh ok, it’s the token fight scene. Fine fine, get on with the movie.

Then, next, Prakashraj. With Prakashraj and Kamal, I expected a powerhouse performance. But it had as much power as a dead battery. He is a really versatile actor, but this movie didn’t do justice to him. His only limelight scene was to cry at the scene of his dead daughter. OK, we've seen those scenes before, what else... Next frame, he is killed EXECUTION STYLE (copied from Arthur Hailey's Detective) in US. Excuse me; I thought you were going to live throughout the movie. Did you have some fight with the Producer with regards to compensation? Oh crap.

OK, this gives KH an excuse to go to US. OK at this point I'd like to mention this. The director, Gautham, seems to have become Brand obsessed. I saw the brands, SONY(recorder and camera), Giovanni(suit), Mac Book, iMac(Anderson gets a plain Dell monitor), Hard Rock Cafe, Ford, Motorola(the irritating ring tone) and I was wondering why iPod never came, when finally Jyothika plugged into one. Whew, I thought they would miss the Icon of the decade. And so on..... .All displayed prominently on the screen, as though he was showing off his taste. Excuse me...........!!! We've seen those before. Real pros don’t show off their equipment, they show the output. I got a real headache seeing the cut finger on the Mac. OK we got the point, please move on.

Mr. Andersen (borrowed from Matrix?) is the phoren sidekick to KM. He acts dumb and plays along with KH. And is finished off quick. He could not afford to come to India for shooting.

Lemme highlight the points. Too much gore, much too much gore. Not necessary at all. Murder, rape, dismembering etc etc, the works.

OK, so he goes to USA and meets Jyothika and saves her from suicide. Disgusting way shown to commit suicide. Kamal and Jyothika seem to have ZERO chemistry. In KK, we could literally see sparks between Surya and Jo. OK Mr. Director why don’t you accept the fact that they are made for each other. In this movie KH and Jo have as much chemistry as Soap and Hard water. No lather and no foam. The entire gamut of actors seem to behave like they've got to make small talk and pleasantries while they have extreme pressure in their bowels. They talk quickly and are hurry to go to the next scene so that they can pack up and go home. Hello!!! I paid money to see you act, so please emote on the screen.

There are some gems in the movie. Kamal's previous wife is awesome. I took an instant liking to her. She gave a good cameo role. But had to exit quickly. Not before KH gave her the Kamal Saar's Kiss. And the part where he lies down beside her dead body and cries seemed totally insensitive. Mr.Kamal, please give a dead body its due respect.

One more joke that made me crack up was Jo enquiring about Kamal's profession; she asked him if he was in Software. No, he says, I'm with the Police, I'm in Hardware. Good line to use sometime.

They way he proposes to his first wife was cool. I hope to do that one day WITHOUT getting slapped. But actually, I don’t think I can do that anymore.

Jo's ex husband was borrowed from KK; he was Jeevan’s (Pandya) big bro. It was boring to watch the same KK cast, now cast in opposite roles. Yawn!!! Maya makes a reentry as Jo's kid. Why resurrecting ghosts, was my question?

If Gautham did an excellent job to display the TN Police in all splendor in KK, he has buried them under the ground in VV. The Police are shown as sloppy beings. Kamal makes use of High sounding words like Psychopath and some really esoteric words. The TN police seemed to be nodding without seeming to understand anything. They seemed to think - "OK Mr. DGP, we know you went to USA. You got your Visa, now don’t be pushy and behave like a Peter, we've seen such sort of people and they bite the dust early."

Gautham incidentally appears in a song, doing some sort of a break dance. OK OK, not everybody can be a Hitchcock so please go back behind the camera.

Songs are good. I had heard them on Radio and didn’t know that they were from this movie. Good job there, but maybe the beats were a bit powerful; I thought my phone was vibrating when in fact it was the song reverberating off my chest.

Oh I forgot, the Director too forgot this. He was taking the story quite deep when he remembered, "Oh Shit I forgot to introduce the villains". And so he introduced them some time before the interval. Hello, aren’t they supposed to be on a parallel track of the movie, so that the Audience can bite their nails as to when the Hero and Villain can meet. They seem to come quite late and it’s an irritation because we now have to remember them separately (In software terms they were not DECLARE'd before and now they demand space in Memory). OK get on with the show. So it seems that they are World class Doctors with University Ranks. OK, stop glorifying the villain, any dumb ass can use a scalpel. To prove that he was a doctor, he mentioned puncturing Kamal's pulmonary something so that blood would enter his Lungs and he would die, ok looks like you paid some Doctor to get that information. Don’t crap all over my head.

I do seem to notice that plenty of movies make use of the scenes from Max Payne, the legendary Video game (I am proud to say that I completed the Game). So many scenes borrowed from that Video game. I have lost count of the movies that have aped this wonderful game. This movie too took two scenes from this game. One was the shooting scenes inserted for no reason, and the second was the fire scene.

To cut a long story short, Director Gautham seemed to have seen or read something, took inspiration, wrote it down in a book and did a scene from it. So end result, a totally disjointed movie. It looked like a Project Report compiled on the previous day of Report Submission and with the content from Google. Bits and pieces of information here and there. It appears to have some sort of story, but doesn’t quite connect.

To add more water to a full bladder, the guy beside me had some sort of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). He kept blowing out through his nose as though something was stuck in it and he kept doing it. Irritated me like hell. I showed a Closed fist beside his face and he stopped. When he started it again, I flexed my arm and he stopped again. In between he shouted Bullshit. Oh the characters that come to Theaters............ .

The movie ends with Kamal's favorite device, The car chase. In this case it was a bike chase. The idiot driving the bike should have gone to Triplicane where narrow streets could have saved him. Instead he goes on the Highway. DUH. And it seems like the two villains are homos. Mr. Gautham, you seemed to have included every shade of psychotic illness into this movie, what exactly were you thinking.

The movie is a damn big bore. It tops the list of worst movies I have seen. VV, Kangalal Kaithu Sei, and En Swase Katrae. There might be worse movies, but thank the merciful God I haven’t seen them.

What else, this movie was canned for a long time. And I think Mr. Director knew this was going to flop miserably. So what does he do? He plans a simultaneous release in many theatres, so that people see it in hordes and before the Bad Reviews come out and he would at least collect some money. Looks like it worked and I was sucked right in.

So what’s the verdict? Buy the Audio cassette. Donate the money, with which you intend to purchase your ticket, for some good cause. Don’t even buy the pirated version. Don’t download it and waste precious bandwidth. Let it die a peaceful death. I'm grateful the Director didn’t let Jo die. He tried to show it though. Mr. Gautham, please go see a Psychiatrist. You need treatment.

Bottomline - INSIPID CRAP. Too much violence. Too much gore. Too much rape and murder. Lack of chemistry between lead pair. Excellent actors underutilized. Disjoint story. Idiotic fights. Good songs. Too much of showcasing Kamal walking in slow motion wearing dark glasses. Too brand obsessive. Villain pair suck big time. Tried to copy the formula used in KK, but with disastrous results. Very predictable at every turn. Mr. Kamal, you're getting old. Please stick to comedy movies.

That’s it. I took the effort to type this so that people will know what a crap movie it was. You have been warned.