Bairavaa Review - A good build up for a weak battle!!!
Bharath Vijayakumar

Bharathan can make for an interesting case study. For someone who has made a name for himself through dialogues in typical commercial vehicles ( Dhil, Dhool, Ghilli and Veeram ) it is rather surprising that he united with Vijay to direct a film like Azhagiya Thamizh Magan - a definite deviant from a typical Vijay film. His second and much lesser known film Athithi ( remake of Cocktail from Malayalam ) too was quite different in relation to his filmography as a dialogue writer. In a sense it looks like Bharathan returns to home ground with Bairavaa but without having a played a match here.

The good thing about Bairavaa is that it makes it absolutely clear what type of film it is right from the first frame. A template followed to a T with no effort to try anything fresh. But this unabashed display of relying on the leading man's charisma to bring the roof down is what works in the film's favour, upto a point. Predictability is not a problem if you can make it up with some excitement at every opportune movement. But Bairavaa has only one trick. And that is Vijay having his fans on a revelry with the help of Santosh Narayanan's pulsating 'Varlaam Vaa' score. It works big time in the pre interval stunt sequence, the highest point of the film. The villain is shown as formidable upto now and hence this sequence followed by the tailor made punch dialogues work. But after this it is a one sided match. Scene after scene the bad men are made to look like lame ducks. There is absolutely no tension or fizz to the proceedings.

Right from Vijay's hairdo, a lot of things in Bairavaa seems to have been taken for granted and the film looks like one of those products made in a hurry. Vijay himself is quite inconsistent in the film. He rocks a few scenes but some of his antics are not really what they used to be. For someone with a superb comic timing he hits a rough patch in quite a few such scenes. Keerthi Suresh certainly can emote and she does well.

Bottomline:

The core plot of Bairava has sufficient pulp to be juiced enough for a mass masala. The problem with some of our filmmakers is that they think only about colour when it comes to masala. It is the spice that matters. Bairava is more about the colour. It loses the spice midway !!!

Rating : 2.25/5

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