Endhiran, the most awaited Thamizh movie to date, costliest movie ever made in India and yes, it lives up to its hype to a large part thanks mainly to the vision of Shankar. It is a commercial movie on the basis of Artificial Intelligence.
Disclaimer - I apologize for any spoilers. They are completely unintended.
Even though it is touted as a Rajnikanth movie, I see it largely as a Shankar movie. The story is not revolutionary as many other movies that are coming out today in Thamizh. So what is so great in this movie?
1. After Kamal Hasan starrer Vikram, this is the only other Science Fiction movie
2. Shankar has shown his technical knowledge what with the use of medical terms for forcefully moving the hip bones to deliver the baby was exceptional (I don't remember the medical term) and shows his research (also the part to stress it was an age old practice). Also to give Shankar credit for his research on humanoid robots such as the use of the motors, the processor and the neural schema (shown when Danny Denzongpa was talking to Chitti) is good. He has shown as using State Diagrams when teaching/programming emotions to Chitti.
3. The richness which Shankar has brought into the movie such as the sets, even the cars (only Audi, Benz, BMW and Benteley are used in most parts). There is grandeur everywhere and sometimes it is a bit too much. I can't believe his productions are low to medium budget
4. Rathnavelu's camera is exceptional especially the scene at Perungudi landfill where there is a upside-down shot of the car and the capture of the action sequences
5. Graphics and Animation, which is there from the first scene to the last. It is extremely good. Even the minute differences between the hand textures of Rajnikanth and Chitti (when they hug) are shown clearly. I noticed that the entire graphics team consisted of people of Eastern and South Eastern Asia regions.
6. Shankar's direction and most importantly his vision for the movie and his ability to bring it on screen. Scenes where in Chitti say's that humans lie for self preservation, his idea of choosing the university for Robotics research (Carnegie Mellon Univ.), the idea where in emotions are to be programmed to Chitti and subtly uses the lightning strike as a intervention from God to instill emotions in the robot, Danny's words when he says that "the story starts now" when Rajnikanth successfully "programs" emotions into Chitti are few instances.
Not Impressive/Dissapointing parts
1. Every frame has Rajnikanth and there seems to be an overdose. Also Chitti, when it turns rogue, is characterized as very close to human emotions. I am not sure if that would be the actual case, but then again we have not seen a robot with emotions.
2. Aishwarya Rai's character lacks depth or for that matter even the characterization is incomplete. Something seems completely amiss. She does look extremely good for a close to 40 year old. Can't imagine her for a medical student
3. The sets of the labs of both Ranjnikanth and Danny seem to be a bit too exaggerated, especially considering that the projects are govt. financed.
4. A bit too lengthy
5. Some of the action scenes are not logical such as when Chitti fights the rogues on the train. I cannot fathom a titanium rod hitting a person with huge force and the person stands up to fight again.
6. The movie though very nice misses some special ingredient from Shankar and it looks like the script was definitely changed for Rajnikanth and I guess Shankar has admitted to it to and so not all attributes of Shankar's film is visible in it.
7. The last scenes where in Rajnikanth tries to stop Chitti is all too difficult for the common illiterate people to understand and one thing that I dont understand is how is worming one robot can worm the others. Is it that all the robots are networked? I can probably try to understand worming but how about deactivating a module on one robot deactivate it on other robots. Even if it was a server-client architecture the robot used was a client (here I am assuming that the server is Chitti) how did it affect the other robots?
8. Also, my personal opinion is that the movie might have been well made if one of the newer heroes would have acted such as Surya or Jiiva but I guess a movie of such huge budget needs a huge star and with Tamil Nadu it is either Rajni or Kamal and both their styles are very evident and huge to be modified for the movie.
9. Rahman's music is not as good as his past. Some songs are good such as Kilimanjaro and Kadhal Anukkal. The lyrics of the Arima song is very nice. Unfortunately, I did not focus on the background score and so I can make no comments on it. However, the title score (at the end) was very nicely done.
Overall the movie is enjoyable in parts but it is entertaining overall and I must say it is definitely worth a watch. Let me know your thoughts.
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