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Malaikkottai
Reviewer's Summary - Same Old, Same Old
Language: Tamil
Year: September 2007
Actors: Vishal, Priyamani, Ashish Vidyarthi, Devraj, Mayilsamy, Manobala, Dhandapani
Director: G.Bhoopathy Pandian
Producer: Ajay Kumar
Story: G.Bhoopathy Pandian
Screenplay: G.Bhoopathy Pandian
Dialogs: G.Bhoopathy Pandian
Music: Manisharma
Lyrics: Na. Muthukumar, Yugabharathi
Malaikkottai is yet another disappointing Tamil movie to come out of Kollywood's augean stables this season.
Featuring Vishal Reddy and Priyamani of Paruthi Veeran fame in key roles, Malaikkottai brings the same old jaded story to the screen - a young man arrives in the big city to get away from the bad elements in his small home town. But no sooner is our hero Vishal in the big city Tiruchi, than he gets on the wrong side of a more violent criminal group.
When he's not bashing up ugly-looking thugs in ridiculously choreographed fights, our young man Anbu (Vishal) is romancing a college student Malar (Priyamani).
It frustrates us - and surely other Tamil movie fans too - that the Tamil movie industry pays so little attention to the story, which ultimately underpins the entire movie. Preferring to play it safe, Tamil movie producers and directors stick to hackneyed themes in movie after movie. And Malaikkottai does not stray from this well-trodden path.
Priyamani, who charmed the audience with her fine performance in Paruthi Veeran, is not in her element in Malaikkottai. Vishal is a tad better but greatly lacks the flair of Tamil movie industry's current No-1 action hero Vijay.
Let's hope Vishal does a better job in his upcoming cop movie Sathyam directed by Rajasekhar.
Devraj and Guna, who play the criminal brothers Palani and Guna respectively, fail to make an impact.
The three main fight scenes in Malaikkottai - at the beginning, at the college and the final one at the bus stand toward the end of the movie - are unendurable. With their weird acrobatics and logic-defying limb-movements, the fight scenes in Malaikkottai are downright awful.
Mercifully, Hindi films have mostly stepped away from this nightmare of the hero bashing up 10 or 20 ruffians simultaneously. It's high time that Tamil movie directors did the same.
Most Tamil movies have either Vadivelu or Vivek to provide comic relief and take moviegoers' minds off the silly story on the screen for a few moments. But Malaikkottai is that rare Tamil movie that avoids Vadivelu and Vivek.
Instead, comedy in Malaikkottai comes via flashback of a romance involving Anbu's police inspector uncle (Ashish Vidyarhi) and constable Kamala (Urvashi) in his police station.
Malaikkottai's dialogs are charmless while the music is pedestrian with none of the tunes likely to turn into mega-hits.
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