Aayirathil Iruvar – A double action movie that also doubles up as a punishment!!!

Bharath Vijayakumar

'A Saran Film'. 'A Bharadwaj Musical'. This was a successful combo and could even be nostalgic to a few. I have never been a fan of Saran films but there was a time when he was able to churn out hits rather consistently and he had a certain signature in his films. He introduced quirky characters even in run of the mill commercial entertainers. Remember Teja (played by the late Kalabhavan Mani) the villain in the Vikram starrer 'Gemini' who mimics animals? The director then hit a rough patch. So when the first two sentences in this paragraph opened the starting credits, a part of you wants the film to be good. It is always fascinating to see someone back a comeback. So despite the underwhelming feel that the promos gave I was hoping against hope that Saran might have something up his sleeve.

Ten minutes into the film and I was thankful for one thing. Just a couple of days back Sathyam cinemas had introduced the 'Do Not Disturb' concept in select shows.I was wondering what if this film had miraculously found its way into one such show and what if I was in it. In this case most of the disturbance comes from the screen! To write about a movie you first need to be honest with yourself, respect the craft and avoid fidgeting with your phone during the entire duration. I did the first two right but had I not relaxed my third rule, then sitting through 'Aayirathil Iruvar' seems very close to impossible. 

The plot bears a close resemblance to Saran's own Attagasam. This film even has Vinay work in a mechanic shop much like Ajith did in Attagasam. I unabashedly give myself a pat for deciphering the plot and noticing these things because I doubt even the makers themselves could tell you honestly what this film is about. There is quite some gratuitous skin show in the songs. This is not a complaint but in almost every scene that has a girl on screen the camera angles leave no doubt that the intention of the makers is to titillate the male populace in the audience. But all this is so much on your face that titillation is overridden by a feeling of disgust. 

There was one instance that reinforced the faith that the makers did put some thought in atleast some aspects of the film. A few conversations in the film were in Telugu and my eyes went to the bottom of the screen looking for subtitles. Atleast the makers knew that nothing is going to be missed by not adding subtitles. But what about me? The only picture in my mind at this point was the makers having a hearty laugh at my cost. I wouldn't blame them. This is a film that has Vinay play a small town guy called 'SevvathaKaalai'. This is a film where the dual roles that the hero plays gets differentiated with one of them sporting a golden tooth. This is a film that does almost everything the way it should have not been done and I did not want to miss a conversation in a language that I did not understand. I surely deserve to be laughed at! But I did have my revenge in another scene when one of the characters makes a reference to 'Okkadu' instead of 'Ghilli'. These events are suppossed to be happening in the Tamil Nadu - Andhra border and this reference should have been a deliberate attempt to lend authenticity. But this literally is lending authenticity to a film that looks like a random amalgamation of deleted footage from really poor films!!!

Bottomline:

I had always felt jealous about Censor officials for getting to watch films in their most original form and getting paid for the same. Then films like these remind you that no job is easy.