Lingaa

Watched Lingaa Here is my take.In short the movie showed up lots of flaws as a crash project mega budget movie. Direction I would say 3/10 didn't expect this from Ravi Kumar. Superstar in the flash back portions rocked with his calm and polite acting. The starting 30 mins of the movie I felt really boring and dragging. Introduction song of super star showed too much efforts by Rajini to dance along with the foreigners. But watching the song I felt that he can stop acting as hero and move on doing roles like Big B. VFX was so poor in the movie. Our heroines looked almost alike in their built were just used as dolls nothing much to do. Songs of ARR was disappointing. Except 2 OK kind of duets. Not his best. Overall treat for those who waited long for seeing his presence on screen. But I wouldn't buy superstar's magic in this movie this time -Reviewed by Balachandran Sivakumar

This is probably worst tamil movie in Rajini's entire career. No wonder why it was flop. Rajini's movies are big budget movies. This movie was one of the biggest mistake Rajini ever did in his life.

Watched Lingaa!! Well, the first 20 minutes was really unbearable, after which some respite, came with the nicely done slow motion fight scene on top of moving train. Though the movie is watchable once...it doesn't have the energy of a Padaiyappa, nor it induce pathos like Muthu, and definitely not the style and masala like Shivaji or Robo if one wants to draw a comparison. Can call it an average Rajni movie. One thing very evident through out the movie was clearly the star has aged. I think after this he should accept roles which matches his age like Amithabh does, take for example Sarkar, Baghban or even some thing like Drishyam etc, where the roles demand a more dignified star power.

ARR's music is also nothing to write about. Nor the production quality. In fact I can say the production quality is below average, no single scene looks like it was set in pre-independence era. The Slow motion fight scene is brilliant, looks like cut and pasted from some other movie. May be they outsourced that bit..who knows.

If it's a project featuring one of the biggest superstars of Indian film industry eagerly awaited by his huge fan following in the south (coming after a long gap of three years ignoring the animated KOCHADAIYAAN), then its nothing less than a big cinematic festival in that specific region celebrating the event in an unbelievable style, not seen even in the case of biggest Hindi film stars to be honest.

However if the same film releases in its dub format in Hindi then it struggles to find viewers even in its very first show despite all the hype and publicity received. And I was really surprised to have this contradictory experience this Friday, when the theater owners told me that you will have to wait for a while as we need more tickets to be sold in order to run its first show as scheduled. Fortunately about 12- 15 people did come asking for LINGAA and I thankfully got to see it as desired in its dubbed version.

Moving on to the film, it has everything required for a Rajinikanth project supporting his larger than life image of both a superstar as well as a socially active person. But sadly the content has nothing fresh to say and gives you the same old feeling of watching a complete masala flick of the 80s with ample dosage of heroism, patriotism and emotional drama written around the superstar. In other words, LINGAA once again offers that standard mix of many typical sub-plots put together including a petty group of thieves, a casual heist, a romantic news reporter, the village link, an emotional flashback with the period theme, references of British rule and their brutality, a rich maharaja turning into a savior, an important dam built by him alone, misunderstandings being created, love affairs thrown in to fill the space and then a poor climax with some mediocre action heading towards a happy ending.

The dialogues are specifically written asking for claps and whistles in the theater, whereas few early songs are just added into the script like a five minutes relief item or a musical advertisement as usual. Beginning with all below average sequences, the narration goes into a long (nearly 100 minutes) flashback hindering the pace severely. And returning to the present you just have the routine end-fight to see, shot hurriedly with some mediocre special effects, strangely in a Rajinikanth film. Probably the length has something to do with the viewers phenomenal love for their icon, forcing the makers to give them more. But having nothing fresh to say in its nearly three hours, LINGAA struggles hard to make an impression and remains just an average film with the only saving grace being the Superstar.

Mentioning its plus points, the film largely works in its emotional or confrontation scenes alone and fails to deliver anything great when it comes to the basic storyline, songs, background score and performances. Where the action impresses in its early train sequence, it does exactly the opposite in the climax fight. Cinematography and Sabu Cyril's art direction visibly gives the film its much required support but A. R. Rahman's musical score remains the biggest disappointment undeniably. The master composes a very ordinary soundtrack for such a big venture and it was even more surprising to see the name of Gulzar behind some of its weird lyrics like "Mona Gasolina" and more.

Performance wise, Rajinikanth does manage to deliver a towering act as the generous Maharaja, but doesn't have anything novel to offer as the young thief (he has a double role in the film). Sonakshi Sinha does it well and is more appealing in her controlled act in the later reels. Anushka is charming as far as looks are concerned but gets to play a completely artificial character in the film. Plus the enormous supporting cast mostly comes up with all average acts as required in its flashback sequences.

In short, it's a project featuring one of India's biggest superstar, but again has the same predictable story to tell where the lead character first gets maligned and thrown out of the village only to regain his lost respect and image as the truth gets revealed with a hugely disappointing climax. Honestly we have seen this many times before since the last century and now actually wish to see something more innovative, path breaking and unexpectedly impressive when it comes to names such as Rajinikanth. Hope our Thalaivaa will deliver the same in his next venture rising above the routine soon.

First of all the movie has a brilliant plot, when it enters into Raja Lingeswaran's flashback. But why the movie has such a low rating and box office reception you ask, i'll tell you.

The movie is well cast. Especially Vijayakumar, who does a great job.

The movie falls mainly due to poor direction, cinematography, music and pretty much every technical department fails in this one.

K.S. Ravikumar had a great story but overloads it with a lot usual masala stuff, making it a tough watch.

The stunts reminded me of "Man of steel", with a lot of flying and destruction. Totally cringe worthy.

The director tries hard to bring the style element in, but fails. Because first the movies like Baasha, Padayappa, Arunachalam etc.. set a baseline standard for Thalaivar. Then the bar was set even higher by Shankar's Sivaji with an even more stylish Superstar. KSR tries to bring all these style elements together, failing big time.

Another extremely irritating part of the movie being the portrayal of the heroines. A total Arunachalam-Padayappa rip off. Those kind of heroines were popular then. Times have changed, it's 2015 now and social situations have changed a lot. But the director sadly, is still stuck in the 19th century.

IN A NUTSHELL, I WOULD SAY: The movie would have been better with only the RAJA's sequence, where SUPERSTAR would shine as an ACTOR rather than just a style icon.

Rajini did so well in the RAJA half, it was brilliant by the actor.

And one thing i would criticize on the RAJA's sequence would be that they fail to show the Architectural difficulties of building such a dam.

Other than that the RAJA's plot was just sheer brilliance. Certainly a watchable movie which could have been better.