Spyder

This film revolves around a low-level employee for the Intelligence Bureau named "Shiva" (Mahesh Babu) whose job consists of monitoring private telephone conversations between everyday people to try to prevent crimes if he can. To help him accomplish this he has developed a software application that keys in to certain words or phrases and then he dispatches one of his contacts to the potential crime scene to intervene if necessary thereby stopping a crime before it can be committed. The beauty of it is that his superiors have no idea of what he is actually doing as it's all off the record. His satisfaction in helping others, however, is put to the test when he sends one of his colleagues to a destination where a serial killer by the name of "Sudalai" (S. J. Suryah) is secretly hiding and both his friend and the innocent person he was hoping to help are brutally murdered. From that point on he makes it his mission to track down this murderer before he can kill any more people. What he doesn't know is just how clever this maniac is. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a good action film for the most part but it struggled somewhat with the romantic element between Shiva and "Charlie" (Rakul Preet Singh). Likewise, the ending also got a bit out of hand as well. Even so, despite these faults I enjoyed this film and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

Let's first acknowledge the few things that 'Spyder' gets right: 'Heroism' in all its cinematic sense, is pretty dumbed down in the flick - the protagonist Shiva (Mahesh Babu) enjoys a desk-job where he operates as a peeping tom in people's lives (by tapping into their phones). Borrowing a cue from Spielberg's 'Minority Report', he uses an application he has developed on his own, to serve as a (relatively unknown) vigilante by bringing criminal deeds to a standstill. It's the kind of story befitting Tier-II (or aging) stars of Indian cinema, where the punchlines are practically non-existent, public acceptance of the hero is negligible and the fight scenes aren't marred by excessive slow-motion. Kudos to Mahesh Babu (a superstar in Telugu) for taking up such a role in the prime of his career. His superb Tamil diction might even put industry A-listers to shame.

Unarguably the best thing about the film is the pre-interval stretch where the evolution of the antagonist is disclosed. Sudalai spends a good part of his childhood in a graveyard lending ears to the screams and cries of the dead's kindred. As time progresses, it slowly grows into a fiendish 'addiction' of sorts for him. When the number of visitors start to dwindle, he commits murders just to listen to people weeping - a form of perverse delight ascribed to 'Sadistic Personality Disorder'. The evil aura surrounding this character is further accentuated by the elucidation of his present exploits: people are chopped into pieces and their limbs mixed up. Reason? There is NO freaking reason! Touché Mr. Murugadoss. Thanks for not adding Sudalai to the overdone 'killing for vengeance' list.

Now, the drawbacks: The visual effects are appalling. For a film with a whopping 120 Crore budget, one would have hoped to see better work done on that front. It also doesn't help that the director is vainly attempting to outdo each set-piece fiasco with another. The settings must have sounded like aesthetic marvels during early discussions: one at a theme- park involving a roller-coaster, one involving a massive boulder crushing everything in its path, and one set in a collapsing hospital. The ideas are somewhat poorly construed - even with seasoned technicians such as Santhosh Sivan, Sreekar Prasad and Harris Jeyaraj on board, the outcome is astonishingly subpar.

Not to forget the weakest element in most star vehicles these days: the heroine. While it's quite unconventional (in South Indian cinema) to see Shalini (Rakul Preet) wanting to pair up with Shiva on a friends-with-benefits kind of relationship, this isn't the film where the topic gets fully tapped into. What we get are ho-hum song & dance routines that only act as 'pee-breaks' (why do directors consider stuffing songs in a thriller when their contribution is just to prolong the run-time?). Murugadoss in fact, wants to appease both rural and urban viewers - so on one hand, we have porn-watching women ready to experiment, and on the other, soap-watching housewives ready to save innocent lives and kick some baddie-arse.

'Spyder' is yet another case of teasers giving the wrong impression. What someone would naturally expect (by just seeing the teaser) is an international espionage thriller that makes good use of technology and advanced gadgetry (like the rather slick-looking CGI spider) to nab a villain à la Blofield from the Bond series or Thomas Gabriel from 'Live Free or Die Hard'. Which is also why I must insist on the character of Sudalai being used in a different film altogether (one with a more ghastly tone preferably on the lines of a 'Raman Raghav 2.0'.). The Chanwook Park ('I Saw The Devil') or Christopher Nolan (Batman trilogy) style of pitting 'flawed-hero against menacing-villain' doesn't translate effectively on screen here, even though Suryah's act is remarkable.

Verdict: At best, 'Spyder' is an okay watch for the rendering of the near-mythical antagonist. The second half has 'exaggeration' written all over it, and surely won't go down well with most viewers!

It's a good movie. But the story is inspired and some scenes are the exact copy of Christopher Nolan's batman movie THE DARK KNIGHT. But S.J.Surya nailed it

The movie was so good. Everybody acted very well in the movie. The main highlight in the movie were SJ Surya's acing and Harris Jayaraj's BGM. Songs were not so good in the movie. The movie has some unwanted scenes mainly heroine is not needed and songs are not needed in this movie. As it is a thriller movie. Good Movie.

Mahesh Babu has nailed it with his bilingual. Superb story and a grippy screenplay is the crust of the film. Mahesh Babu, acts as an intelligence bureau officer whose motive is to help the innocent before any mishap. But one such case, a mysterious one, forms the crust of the story. The expectations created by the first half is let down by the second half. Ineffective romantic portions and logical lapses in fight sequences had slowed down the pace. Even though such lapses are present, they could be overlooked for the sake of SJ Suryah, the main antagonist. His role is effective and at times reminds us of the JOKER in The Dark knight and the film also contains a similar interrogation scene. The villains past aka flashback is not a cliché and is convincing. The heroine is the weakest of characterisations in the whole of the film containing little screen space. RJ Balaji too doesn't have much scope in his character.

Overall it is the usual cat-and-mouse game with some amazing touches by AR Murugadoss. It is a more than a one time watchable entertainer. AR Murugadoss has given the audiences an amazing entertainer with a strong social message inside.