Vivegam

Vivegam (2017): When you're in a mass-hero film, two important aspects are prerequisite. One: Whether it has a panoply of mass scenes to make your theatre experience... deafening. And two, whether it caters to the star's fans.If the movie is a typical commercial film,we may allow that but when the movie is hyped as a spy thriller with grandeur scale and costly production values,we seriously expect a decent experience.Did Vivegam achieve it? Plot: Ajay Kumar (AK) is an agent working for a counter terrorism agency. The agency is in Serbia. He is wanted by 80 countries and many agencies as he is suspected to have gone rogue, misusing his power.His former friends in the agency headed by Aryan (Vivek Oberoi) are now hunting for him. In turn, Ajith Kumar is after people who betrayed him when he was on a mission to track Natasha (Akshara).How AK finds his betrayers and also saves his wife Yazhini (Kajal) is the rest of the story.

My Review: Five minutes into the movie,the opening scene itself clarifies that the so-hyped spy film is just another fan-mela film with unnecessary build-up shots and loud music.

Consider Ajith's introduction scene. An army officer locks a weapons deal with a terrorist organisation. When he's cautioned about the Counter Terrorist Squad, the general says, "Even the wind needs my permission to enter into my territory." Ideally, you would expect Ajith Kumar to show up. But the wind gently ruffles Ajith's salt-and-pepper hair.There are lot of fan moments in the film and scene after scene makes this movie look like a Fan-Made trailer sorta thing.

Director Siva and Ajith, in their third consecutive collaboration, go all out to present a film on an international scale and going by the standards they've set, it's truly remarkable. The attempt is ambitious and the team's effort is commendable, but what's the point of all this hard work when it is not backed by an engaging story. Despite going international, in terms of scale and vision, Siva's filmmaking style is still loud and over-the-top mostly. It defeats the whole purpose of giving the story an international touch.

Except for ridiculous opening scene,rest of the action scenes are handled good but have lot of illogical factors.The pre-interval portion, especially the stretch that leads to Akshara Haasan's introduction, is easily the film's best sequence. It builds the tension effectively and is followed by a breathtaking chase sequence on the streets of Serbia.

Ajith in the role of an agent is in top form. He has done some high-octane action sequences terrifically. Indeed it is his show all the way.Ajith's physical transformation deserves special praise, and he has worked really hard, despite shooting in extreme climatic conditions. He carries the film on his shoulders and turns in a never seen before kind of performance.

Music is bad and Cinematographer must have undergone severe pain following the directors messy vision.

So,Vivegam may look grand because of foreign locations and action scenes but it is just a typical mass-masala film.Watch it only for Ajith and action scenes.

My Rating 5.5/10

There are directors who love to add excessive slow-motion to scenes. And there's Siva. He adds 'fast-motion' to his set-pieces. We don't get to see what's really happening, because the camera moves at lightning speed and so does the hero (all his movies have been about hero- worship with an overdose of family sentiment - this shtick has reached its tiresome saturation. It's 2017, not the 80s anymore!). The break- neck editing style doesn't accentuate the viewing experience either. Even if (some of the) set-pieces in 'Vivegam' are clap-worthy in terms of ideas, this jump-cut method kills the execution almost completely. Except for the hero who owns every frame he's in, we don't even know who's getting beat-up or killed.

Remember what Dicaprio had to go through in 'The Revenant' (the struggle in the cold, wilderness while recovering from injuries)? Well, Siva summarizes all that toil (and more, like doing inverted crunches) in a song where Anirudh screams 'Thalai Viduthalai'. Vivek Oberoi who plays the major antagonist and secret-society agent (I'm not kidding) Aryan, although welcomed initially as a neat addition to the ensemble, persistently keeps heaping praises on his arch- nemesis (who he addresses throughout the movie as 'Nanbaa') Ajay "AK" Kumar (played by none other than Ajith Kumar) a renowned covert (contrasting choice of words, but that's exactly what he is - he makes stealthy moves but he blows places up and shoots everyone he doesn't like) operations specialist, who's betrayed by his own team.

Aren't even the most generic hero-villain sagas more entertaining when the villain is always two steps ahead of the hero? Here, it's the other way round. AK has a solution for everything, and I mean everything. Before an idea even cooks up in Aryan's head, AK's already executing it. "That's AK for you!" - Aryan himself says this like ten times. As if we didn't know. Meh.

Yes, everyone including white Europeans speak Tamil (either via double-layering or directly) which is fine considering we can at least fixate our eyes on the proceedings and not the subtitles. But the accents make the delivery sound unintentionally funny on most occasions. The foreign actors do a very generic job and their dubbing / lip-sync is terrible. Worst, Siva is trying to follow the 'Bond' template but one that's strictly grounded to suit Tamil cinema sensibilities. So the hero doubles as a family man, the best husband around, who at times even fries onions at his wife's (Yazhini, played by Kajal Aggarwal) South Indian restaurant (based in central Europe mind you, yet replete with saree-clad attenders and 'Rajavin Parvai' singing executive chefs) when he isn't frying someone's head on his job.

Technical mumbo-jumbo is spat out from almost every character in the movie - each character in AK's team is given a one-shot intro scene (with an animated pop-up that details their work stats - Gosh, the funniest stuff you'll read. For eg. Skill #3 of the 'Head of Interrogation' - INTERROGATION!). The spelling errors are glaring - STRATERGIST for 'Strategist' (Really?); Mission Coun? Where's the T? How can you trust the instincts of a movie that can't even get its spellings right?

'Vivegam' also has the worst hero-introduction scene in recent times. Subpar visual effects try to convey the fact that our hero, who took his own sweet-time to mumble a few lines in Tamil followed by "Never, ever give up!" to a bunch of military grade officers, had just jumped off a lofty dam - shooting and adjusting his watch on his way down and swimming away to safety. Kajal's character is added just to elevate the character played by Ajith. We have scenes where she keeps reinstating how she is the luckiest wife in the world to have a husband like him, and the quintessential 'passing the inspiration' scene where she goads her husband to kill everyone who betrayed him. Heck, our man bothers to mouth exhausting monologues to the antagonist over the phone even when his wife is struggling in labor. Towards the end, even Aryan seems to have given up - he tells AK exactly what he plans to do and how he's gonna go about it (makes things easy, right?).

Bits and pieces of 'Surviva' are used effectively as BGM, while the rest sound too noisy. The climax set-piece, set in a cave, comes exquisitely wrapped with the "Holy sh*t!" moment. See it to believe it.

Verdict: Alt+Ctrl+Delete!

This is another typical one man taking on hundreds of goons kind of movie. Do not waste your time and money on this piece of waste. Kajal is just a side character with no real importance at all and is just a filler. expected much after the success of Vedalam, but this is a plain mockery ! watch at your own risk

After their successful collaboration in Veeram & Vedalam, Ajith and Siva are uniting for the third time in Vivegam. This spy action thriller sounds like a much bigger film and looks really like a quality film too. Siva has made it a notch higher from his previous works by making this film abroad. He went on to make it a visual treat for the audience but unfortunately, Vivegam doesn't seem to be a strong film. The storyline seems to be inspired by Hollywood films but honestly, it doesn't matter at all. The main writing which is the screenplay really lacks depth and doesn't follow coherently the initial story. Whenever the film goes intensely it suddenly cuts to a short flashback or an unnecessary song which slows down the pace of the film. The racy action sequences seem to be really intense but it ends up with a sentiment scene that doesn't even work in it. Unlike the brother and sister sentiments in Veeram and Vedalam, Siva brings us the husband and wife sentiment in Vivegam. Placing sentiment in a spy thriller doesn't seem to be a good idea and it feels too much like a soap opera. Vivegam lacks logic in many instances and it severely affects the overall film even though it's an Ajith film at the end. Anirudh's songs are really refreshing but I feel it lacks necessity in this film. This visually high-tech film is depending mainly on Ajith's larger than life persona. He is the one who is making us watch this film patiently. Ajith's hard work and dedication is an extraordinary factor in Vivegam. Even though the film doesn't use it in its favor, Ajith is brilliant with his fit appearance. He is able to make it a watchable film. As the female lead, we have Kajal Aggarwal who has for the first time a much valuable role. Her character seems to have shades of the typical soap-opera female characters but her performance seems to be a decent one to watch. On the other hand, Vivek Oberoi plays the main antagonist Honestly, I don't feel him as a strong antagonist because he doesn't seem menacing at all. He is always encouraging and elevating Ajith with countless friendly dialogues. He forgets what he needs to do and doesn't add the much-needed effect to the film. Siva has made Vivegam strictly for Ajith fans forgetting the main engagement factor. We have a couple of fan moments to celebrate the star but we have very lower factors to stick with the film. After the interval, the film becomes not so interesting and it's only carried by Ajith's screen presence. Overall, Vivegam depends only on Ajith's mass screen presence.

Ajith's this action movie was not as good as I was expecting. Starting 15-20min will be hard for you to stay at your seat becoz of over actions and dialogues. This movie is full of Over Action as other south movies are, Good comedy, Drama, Thriller, Romance, Betrayal. This movie is watchable with your family. This movie Collected 160cr worldwide among the tremendous budget of 130cr with verdict of Below Average.