BOAT Review - A Notoriously Executed Survival Drama!

Ashwin Ram

Boat is a period survival drama starring Yogi Babu in the lead role. The film is directed by Chimbudevan and the music is scored by Ghibran.

Premise:

During the Second World War, Japan bombs India, to escape the on-going attack, a group of people get on a boat to the middle of the sea. The drama that takes place between the people in the boat at this fearful situation forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction:

The base idea is promising and a bare minimum decent screenplay would have made it a satisfying outing. But here, the story flow is terrible and worsens in the proceedings. There are a bunch of characters with an intended emotional layer, sadly the sentiments were never appealing and no one’s presence felt important. Chimbudevan’s strength was humour back then, there are many places where he tries to incorporate comedies in the subject and everything fell flat. Something or the other keeps on happening on-screen, a natural threat in the form of a shark, etc or conflict between the characters, but nothing lands in an interesting manner. Excessive amount of  talkie portions, the socio-political interactions between the people in the boat make sense, but they are relentless to the flow and the other conversations are so boring. The whole MS Baskar detective segment was highly illogical, as if he has all the time in the world to deeply research and write a thesis about the characters around him. Instant laughter evokes when he is revealed as a batchmate of Senapathy (Indian), shows a morphed photo of himself with Kamal Haasan and uses ‘Varmam’ to make someone unconscious. The climax moment of two characters’ sacrificing decision is nice but pathetically portrayed with a message card.

Performances:

Natural performance by Yogi Babu as a full-on character artist without stressing anything extra for the sake of humour. The other actors have also done what the director wanted from them, except for MS Baskar who has turned his serious role into a joke after a point by overdoing things.

Technicalities:

Ghibran’s music is a big advantage, he has given his best to improve all the weakly presented sequences through his effective background score. Just one song, which might be placed monotonously, but the sounding was peculiar. Certain frames are passionately crafted, but unfortunately there is no colour consistency, as the water looks realistic in one shot and becomes dark blue in the next. The overall runtime seems to be a crisp 2-hours, still there are lags throughout and the jump cuts for time shift disturb the flow.

Bottomline

Neat on-paper idea developed in the worst way possible. The situations and threats that follow are poorly translated on-screen, which detach us further away from the flow.

Rating - 2/ 5