Why I Couldn’t Bring Myself To Fully Enjoy Vikram
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Like the tales of old where the heroes had to slay monsters, brave the rough seas, and scale tall mountains to get to the treasure, you need to cross waves of over-analysis and differing opinions on Twitter before you get a ticket and sit down in front of the screen, with your hype intact. But I didn’t have to worry about all that for Vikram(2022). After a long time, the Tamil cinema fandom wasn’t divided. There was a considerable amount of positive hype around Vikram. Everywhere I looked, people liked the movie. I sat down to watch it and finally understood why.
The Movie Knew How To Pull The Audience In
Vikram had a textbook example for a great opening scene. Straight out of the gate the hero gets blown to bits, and now the movie has my attention.Okay, Now where do you go from there? I thought to myself. I know they weren’t gonna kill the hero but It is still a sign of good writing when the writer deliberately writes themselves into a corner and then tries to figure out creative ways to come out of it. And also It was glorious to see Kamal Hassan on screen after a long time, and every one of the actors was churning out great performances too. I was especially in awe of Fahad faasil, the man was clearly worth all the hype and some more. And despite the barrage of exposition dump in the first half, the seamless narrative flow kept me glued to the screens.
The movie sustained this high for quite some time until it gradually declined and I started dreading what was to come. I realised I have to be the contrarian who finds fault in a near-perfect movie that everyone liked. But try as I might, I could not turn off my brain and enjoy it. The movie did not come with the convenient excuse of “we told you this was a commercial movie. Why are you finding fault?” Because this was not one of those mindless masala movies, Vikram was touted as a gritty, grounded, action thriller, made by the newly crowned king of Tamil film bros: Lokesh kanagaraj, and the eternal god of cinephiles: Kamal Hassan. It demanded to be taken seriously and so I did. As a result, I couldn’t avert my eyes from all the problems that took me out of the movie.
World’s Best Girlfriend or An AI From The Blade Runner Universe?
For quite some time people have been complaining about Lokesh Kanagaraj’s movies not having considerable female characters. So it was a breath of fresh air when Gayathri walked in, as Fahad faasil’s love interest, and held onto the frame for more than a couple of minutes. But it took me a while to realise that she was not playing any old female role but the AI Joi from Blade runner 2049. I get that she was supposed to be supportive but it was ridiculous how she was okay to believe everything her fiance said (her fiance being a mysterious man who refuses to blink at an interval of less than 20 seconds). It was one thing to not ask what job he was doing but who wouldn’t freak out when they find a secret room in their fiance’s workplace with newspaper cuttings and pictures of murdered men strung up on the wall?
When Amar misses their wedding and later tries to apologise, the inhuman speed at which she was ready to hug it out made me truly expect an oncoming twist where she would be revealed to be a mole for the bad guys. Imagine my disappointment when she was revealed to be nothing more than a naive “loosu ponnu” but without all the cutesy, annoying traits.
Ban Words Like “Sarakku” And “Consignment” From Tamil Cinema
I once came across an interview by director Gautham Vasudev Menon where he mentioned how he tends to make the protagonist a police officer because it makes it easier for him to bring conflict and action into the story so easily. I understand where he comes from because the police are constantly dealing with criminal elements of the society, and the police-centric action movies do seem to have their seasons. But not many plot conveniences have the luxury of everlasting appeal as “the police hero”. And one of the things that have long crossed its expiry date is the use of “drugs” as the inciting element in action movies. If I hear things like “sarakku” or “consignment” once again in a Tamil movie I might end up taking drugs myself, just to numb the pain of having to hear those words over and over again.
Drug abuse is a massive issue and nobody is going to argue against the evil of drug abuse but are drugs that big a relevant issue in Tamil Nadu? I can imagine why in a show like peaky blinders, the use of cocaine was shown as being ubiquitous. Maybe that was because cocaine abuse was indeed a big documented problem in post world war Britain, a time and place the series was set in.
Do movies really have to reflect real-world issues? You might ask. No, we don’t have to use relevant, real-world issues all the time. But it would be nice if we could at least come up with a new and exciting career path for our movie villains. Maybe they don’t want to be drug smugglers anymore, maybe they just want to chase their dreams….of world dominance? Why are Hollywood villains the only ones who get to destroy the world? Why don’t we let our Tamil movie villains dream bigger?
Why is Fahad Faasil’s Character The Only One With Any Kind of Character Arc?
It is not an unshakeable rule that a protagonist should have a character arc, where they go through a change or grow emotionally. There have been some iconic movie protagonists like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name, Forrest Gump, and John Wick who do not go through any arc. But in Vikram, it is hard to understand why the eponymous hero Vikram is left on the sidelines while we spend the majority of the time with Amar and also get to see him evolve as a person. Amar starts off believing the system, works hard to uphold it, gets emotionally wrecked when his fiance gets killed, starts believing in Vikram’s cause, and ultimately switches over to the other side. (The other side ends up being a place where he is supposedly ready to blow up a house with kids inside? But they’re the bad guy’s kids so it is alright I guess)
Meanwhile our protagonist Vikram starts out flawed but then it is later revealed that all his flaws are designed by himself to throw off his enemies. He never changes what he believes in, never does anything wrong, and is just perfect from the get-go, remaining an untouchable god throughout the movie. Which, again, is not wrong but it would have been nice to see Vikram, a character with so many emotional layers and a heavy backstory, evolve through some kind of an emotional journey.
A Supercar With An Old Engine
Many other things puzzled me. Like why does Vikram’s accent keep slipping in and out of madras bashai? What was the deal with that thick American accent whenever he spoke English? Why did he take his grandchild along to the one place where all his enemies convened that night? Was it just me or was anybody else having trouble understanding Vijay Sethupathi’s muffled delivery?
The performances were great, the absolute carnage unleashed on the screen was well choreographed, the visual storytelling was engaging and yet the writing dragged the movie down for me. It made the movie feel like a shiny new supercar fitted with an old engine. And what good is a car, even with the most stunning design, and cutting edge parts, if all it had was an old engine to pull it forth?
Despite all of that, I cannot declare that I didn’t fully enjoy the movie. I couldn’t cheer at the top of my lungs to Kamal Hassan and Surya walking away from each other to that badass bgm alluding to an impending faceoff and then immediately come out of the theatre and tell my friends that the movie was just alright. Even though I couldn’t enjoy it as much as others did, I still enjoyed it more than any other Tamil movie in recent times.
