Three of India’s greatest contemporary actors Kamal Haasan, Fahadh Faasil and Vijay Sethupathi, get together. Cineastes hold their breath for the explosion of talent in Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vikram.
The breathlessly anticipated trailer is out. The verdict is….deep desperate disappointment. The film looks like a marathon shootout, a gunfight at OK Corral which is not okay. It would make for a great show if the film starred John Wayne, Lee Marvin and James Stewart coming together with blazing guns.
Vikram brings together three formidable actors who define much of what constitutes the crux of Indian cinema. They are normally fearless in their choice of roles and therefore formidable artistes who define those aesthetics of Indian cinema that most commercially successful actors in Bollywood can’t.
To see Kamal, Fahadh and Vijay doing a bang-bang mishmash with eyes and guns ablaze is mortifying and discouraging. It’s a bit like Pandit Birju Maharaj breaking into a Salsa in the middle of his Kathak recital.
It looks and sounds phoney, put-on, exaggerated. Most of all it looks like a colossal waste of talent when all we see is three grownup “boys” indulging in acts of counter-terrorism which would have made more sense with Allu Arjun, Sanjay Dutt and Yash in the lead.
The sounds of fury are highly exaggerated and tone-deaf. The brilliant technicians behind the project should perhaps think about lowering the ear-splitting decibel of the high-drama. We have seen what an exaggerated sound level can do to the product when KGF 2 had opened to an ear-splitting volume of sound mayhem.
Vikram is a full-on aural assault, with visuals to match. It stews its bland creative juices in trite conversational lines like, “One man’s revolution is another man’s terrorism.”
Really?
The music and lyrics sneak into the soundtrack like an alien invasion. The song playing in the trailer goes, “The eagle is coming / Better start running/His blood is rushing/ stunning and gunning.”
My compliments to the resident bard. One question, though: Hindi may not be the national language down South. But why does a Tamil film have a song playing in the English language, and that too one so awkwardly phrased and composed.
Oh yes, and where are the women? Having a gal-pal night out while the men are out playing bang-bang?
There is an ongoing sense of growing uneasiness in the way the trailer of Vikram tries to hijack our attention with a rapid fire eruption of (unimpressive) stylized violence. It’s like three of the great actors of our times taking a break for some serious espionage fun. Quite like Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman taking off on a picnic because they know their fans will indulge them in their moment of collective indulgence.
Even the greats need a break. Vikram is that break for Kamal Haasan, Fahadh Faasil and Vijay Sethupathi. Enjoy the vacation.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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