Vivegam

Let me just narrate couple of situations in the movie Vivegam for you. Hero and Villain are having this hand to hand fight and the heroine who is in severe pain starts singing to give some confidence boost to hero. And in another scene, the villain tracks the heroine by assuming she would login to a website and he finds her by turning on the front cam of almost all the devices that might have accessed the website. As it might become a spoiler, I can’t reveal these scenes in detail and you would realize how bizarre these ideas are while you watch the film. Vivegam is a cinema that stretches the gadget cool agent world in to an intolerable level.

Ajay Kumar (AK) is the member of the counter terrorist squad, a global force. He has five friends in the force and life was risky and at the same time happy for Ajay. One day he gets this new mission to find a girl who knows the code to deactivate a nuclear bomb that has been placed in India. He decides to hunt the girl down, but at the end certain dramatic twists happen. How AK faces this new scenario and how he ultimately solves the nuclear bomb complication is what Vivegam all about.

We have seen these kind of over the top, world saving agent stuff in many Hollywood films. Bond series, Bourne series, MI series and even the recent Kings Man franchise are built around the same concept. So there is no real logic in questioning the ambitious plot of this film. But those films have coherence to their script and visuals. Vivegam had promos making us feel that it has something to do with war and Ajith even looked like Rambo in certain sequences. I was expecting a little more substance after seeing these promos, but Siva disappoints huge time by creating a really silly story that just goes on and on. Being ambitious is not a bad thing, but having some logic and passion to the conceiving of an idea is something that audience will always appreciate.

In terms of making Siva almost becomes Hari. Hectic nature of the narrative gives you zero time to think about the story. The camera is always on the run giving a really tough time to our eye balls. 90% of the scenes that gave you hope about the film, were from two songs. Siva should read more about the usage of technology, the concept of hacking and if possible watch how Hollywood films make all the gizmo gadget stuff look so natural in narrative. Siva is offering new gadget, every time a character gets stuck in a situation and the funny thing is that the character will explain how the new gadget works. The film has 150 minutes of runtime and the hero worshipping happens in every 5 minutes. Anirudh’s EDM BGM can give you a headache by the end of those two and a half hours. The visual effects looked effective only when it was used to display the multiple screens inside CTS headquarters. The stunts are designed by Siva and some of them were really bizarre. Cuts are too quick and slim taking away the impact and I really don’t know why camera should walk along with the character when the scene has him in a much focused mood.

Ajith is known for his stunning looks and body language to portray these kinds of characters with mass appeal. Here also he looks really good and the dialogue delivery that carries the rage also makes an impression. Vivek Oberoi has that over the top attitude of a villain in his face. Interestingly Kajal Aggarwal got a better space in the hero centric film. Akshara Haasan is hardly there for 10 minutes.

With too much of gunfire, heroics and constant background score, Vivegam is more of a chaos rather than an action film. The silliness of this film is very similar to Singham 3, but luckily Vivegam is not an unintentional comedy.

Rating: 2/5