Vishwaroopam (Vishwaroop)

The joy of having intelligent neighbours Kamal Hasan's new mega project took me back to my childhood when the fulfilling movie experiences were mo... read more

The joy of having intelligent neighbours

Kamal Hasan's new mega project took me back to my childhood when the fulfilling movie experiences were mostly those dubbed from Tamil, not been so lately. The nights I've seen Sathyame Sivam (Anbe Sivam) and Abhay (Alavandhan) will forever stay with me. The psychedelic sense of Abhay was too new to make any sense of on the first watch, like any film with ambitious originality (interpreted as Kamal's self indulgence back then) the film got enhanced in the head as days passed and when I've seen it again it seemed too good to be true, too good to be Indian, too good to be from the South.

Plot

In New York the film opens to the lives of Viswanath (a classical dance teacher) and Nirupama (a PhD in radio oncology). The marriage was an arranged one, there was never much love involved and her rich young boss hitting on her are Nirupama's issues at the shrink. A detective Nirupama hires to spy on her husband is killed in an accidental encounter with a warehouse employee. This unintended murder sets things in motion and the couple are brought to the warehouse. The warehouse is a Jihadi station and soon Omar (A jihadi chief played by Rahul Bose) is on his way to meet this nobody dance teacher.

Who is Viswa and why is he of some much interest to the Jihadi?

Things we wish for

The film is full of Kamal's signatures starting with the pun at Brahmins, cool action sequences (our man doing his own stunts), innovative screenwriting (the many flashbacks were neatly infused), impressive visual quality and the assembly of a majestic cast.

How often do we wish that the more capable of our actors find work that's worthy of them? Not just good characters but to wish for these actors to occupy well lit frames and add to its entirety. If Rahul Bose and Nasar are on that wish list, they can be ticked off after this one. And Jaideep Ahlawat in a Telugu film (even though dubbed) was one of the reasons I want to thank the director with a big wide grin.

An accomplishment to be celebrated and not banned.

P.S. About the protests against the film... Here is a man who understands and has the intelligence to make a film about terrorism without seeming like an uneducated angry patriot. This probably is the one mainstream film that depicts the other side of things with love and care (specifics and stand points).

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I took my time to write about this film. Pushing off my initial reactions, I gave the film a lot of thought because I wanted to be really sure. My ... read more

I took my time to write about this film. Pushing off my initial reactions, I gave the film a lot of thought because I wanted to be really sure. My views haven't changed a bit. Vishwaroopam is disappointing.

The film opens with a beautiful Haneke-ish static shot showing a few pigeons fluttering in their shelves. A mysterious looking man, who could be Kamal under heavy makeup, appears and sets a few birds free. What is happening? The action quickly shifts to a woman confessing about her marital and extramarital problems to a psychiatrist. When asked to go in detail about her husband, she takes more than a moment to say something. And then we see the man himself- dancing more gracefully than ever. The first 30 or so minutes of Vishwaroopam are great fun. The film is heavy on Kamal's trademark humor and fills you with a lot of curiosity. Sadly, the film peaks too early. Everything goes downhill from here, ending in a dull climax.

In recent times, we have started making a lot of international films. By international, I am only referring to using foreign locales not just for dancing in colorful clothes but also to drive the story forward. Most have faltered due to their inability to handle the scale. Vishwaroopam's problems are not because it bites more than it can chew. It's because it fails to keep the thrill alive after the halfway mark.

In the league of balls-out campy absurdness, Dasavatharam is up there. After watching Kamal's latest, I have begun to like his previous film better. It has aged well and slowly slipped into the So-Bad-It's-Good territory. The writing is decent enough and there's a proper story arc to most of Kamal's avatars. Though it appears to have been cut from the same fabric as Dasavatharam, it is too early to look at Vishwaroopam in the same light. After all, it is a movie which thinks of itself as high-minded action film which looks at the developing tissues of terrorism.

A huge chunk of the film is set in Afghanistan where one Wasim Ahmed Kashmiri joins al-Qaeda. Rahul Bose's Omar, who is running the operations, accepting Wasim with open arms only pays off when he sees how highly skilled he is. It is here that the movie begins to lose steam and is unable to capitalize on the established mystery. The film recreates the time and place very well but the entire portion is too long for comfort and never particularly enlightening.

When it comes to action, Vishwaroopam leaves you wanting more. Not because the action is so good but because it never gives you much in the first place. There's a Guy Ritchie style real-time/slow-motion fight which is very entertaining. Then there's a car chase which is special in no way. The big set-piece takes place in the Afghan training camp when the natives are bombarded with aerial attacks. Okay, this kind of action has never been seen before in an Indian movie and I am sure it required a lot of hard work, given the budget constraints. But is that a reason good enough to celebrate it? Especially when it is so ordinary? Maybe we shouldn't write sequences which we couldn't materialize.

This new fad (old?) of showing villains with deformities hasn't gone well with me. And Kamal whose legacy itself is prosthetics has tried a couple of things. In spite of it all, Rahul Bose's Omar is a very tame, toothless villain who is not menacing in the least. After the point which I'll simply refer to as the 'transformation', there's never a moment where Kamal's Vishwanath appears vulnerable.

Kamal as a director has taken up a project which is working on a very big scale. I still think he ghost-directed Dasavatharam, or had more than necessary creative control. He still continues to use clunky looking props. Here, he abuses the Bullet Time technique to little effect. The dialogues are not particularly good with instances where they are very bad. Remember that female cop during the interrogation? It's a tough movie to make for an Indian crew and the strains show. Sanu Varghese has done a good job. Vishwaroopam could have been better if the sequence of exposition were tweaked a bit. The final act is devoid of any sort of thrill and monotonously reaches an end. Like Dasavatharam, which ends with sympathy porn montage of Kamal getting his makeup applied, Vishwaroopam too overwhelms with some fast-cut, high-octane shots from action sequences, which we quickly learn belong to the sequel.

In all honesty, I am not at all excited to see this evolve into a franchise. I hope this genius who made Hey Ram would spend his time and talent on a better world. But do go and watch Vishwaroopam on the big screen. Watch it for Kamal's sake.

EXTENDED REVIEW: http://whatbusdriver.blogspot.in/2013/02/vishwaroopam-2013.html

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Kamal Haasan spends a lot of time on writing his scripts and knows the importance of script writing but when it comes to his own films it always a... read more

Kamal Haasan spends a lot of time on writing his scripts and knows the importance of script writing but when it comes to his own films it always appears that he loses track of what he wants to do. in this film too he is in solid command as an actor and director but when it comes to his writing skills he fails himself time and again.

Vishwanath called Whiz by everyone (Kamal Haasan) is a classical dance teacher in New York married to Nirupama ( Pooja Kumar showing ample cleavage to distract attention from her lack of acting skills). Nirupama is having a scene with her boss and sets a detective behind Vishwanath . this set up goes on for almost 50 minutes before we jump into spy mode that keeps cutting into a flashback set in Afghanistan and a present day mission to save a big disaster in USA. the keyword is Sesium.

Vishwaroop is lavish in its setting. engaging to a certain extent but loses the plot mid way thanks to an overstretched screenplay and a villain Omar (Rahul Bose) who is forever in the RGV meets Ajay Devgn scowl mode. Apart from Kamal Haasan, Jaideep Ahlawat and Shekhar Kapur the film suffers from bad casting which makes the film appears unintentionally funny at times.

There is nothing in the film that deserves to be banned in fact it is has a strong point of view that needs to be seen and encouraged.

I would take a half baked Vishwaroop any day over any other topical films made in India.

Word of mouth - Vishwaroop is ek tha tiger minus the masala.

Rating - *** ( above average)

Ticket meter - worth 200 bucks

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Just imagine a valiant effort of pumping in Rs 95 crores in an unconventional film. Adding to that is charting uncharted terrain by trying to relea... read more

Just imagine a valiant effort of pumping in Rs 95 crores in an unconventional film. Adding to that is charting uncharted terrain by trying to release it though new avenues - DTH. That's already given a truckload of goose bumps, so now hold your breath and make way to the creative genius whose middle name is “audacity.” That's universal actor Kamal Haasan for you, and with Vishwaroopam he's also taken the baton of direction. The saddening part is that the DTH experiment to safeguard his investments didn't see the light of day and adding an insult to the injury came in the allegations which stalled the movie's release in some areas. Kamal, with his indefatigable spirit and nerves of steel, is trying to stem the tide and keep the ball rolling. Here comes a coming of age film from a man who believes in walking against the grain. Read the full review here http://insidethecelluloid.blogspot.in/2013/01/movie-review-vishwaroopam-indian-made.html view less

Shot in beautiful locations of U.S, ' Vishwaroopam ' is a breathtakingly graceful movie and aspiring, funny, glorious and fabulously romantic comp... read more

Shot in beautiful locations of U.S, ' Vishwaroopam ' is a breathtakingly graceful movie and aspiring, funny, glorious and fabulously romantic composition of cinematic appeal. Explaining the BIG reveal of Vishwaroopam counts on how much garlands Kamal Hassan can adapt to. Commencing how the clich\xe9d spin may be, the distinctness between Showman's movie and any other " A " grade Thriller movie is just the attendance and companionship of Kamal Hassan, who keeps the movie interesting and clean throughout the end. Now, here's a kind of cinematics the world could use more of . The Actor - Director blithely mingles between to form a lovely silhouette of the eye - popping Vishwaroopam. Keeping away all the controversies the film faced short while ago, precisely this is a film which offers you most joy at the movie theatre. The story revolves around the design where Vishwanath ( Kamal Hassan ) and his beloved counterpart Nirupama ( Pooja Kumar ) get engaged and married boarding U.S for spending their further life. Keeping in mind their motives and the things to do, they assume to accomplish all the goals during their matrimonial life they had decided prior. Nirupama after her studies gets her Ph.D and thinks to break her relations with Vishwanath hiring an investigator to brush the misconceptions she has with his hubby. Things take turn and Nirupama gets indulged with a terror gang member Deepak led by Terrorist Omar ( Rahul Bose ). F.B.I agents struggles here and there, plus Army scenes gets involved and leaves you more clear of the huge canvas of Kamal's story - telling. Even beforehand we have seen Hassan playing more than two roles at a time. Here he plays well as an Underworld Terrorist and as a Bharatnatyam Guru. Between the scenes, the songs ( Shankar - Ehsaan - Loy ) are located perfectly and are pretty pleasant.

Vishwaroopam is that underneath all the honor and dedication to the ' Thriller ' genre apart from Sanu Varghese's stunningly, finely detailed cinematography, there is a self-explanatory fact that when you watch a first-class bit of featured film it ditto's the awareness of being in love. Commonly, the Thriller's demand a zestful anecdote and a fast paced story telling, however Kamal here weaves it with oodles of gags and a rich m\xe9lange of the roles he plays in. The movie finds the right pitch and leaves no trace of being uneven or overblown at any portion. The film is solely strictly for Kamal Hassan's fans. Vishwaroopam is an ' A ' class Thriller in its absolute sparkling arrangement. I would say, you would be a FOOL to miss it. Go watch this descent cin\xe9.

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