Vedalam is too loud a movie mainly catering to the masses especially actor Ajith Kumar‘s diehard fans. For the rest, I have my own reservations about whether the film will be a passable one or not. I was not disappointed atleast till the halfway stage as what was expected was there on screen till that time.
The film test your sensible nerves on numerous occasions and adding salt to the wound is the unconvincing storyline that has some resemblance with Bhasha and Mollywood’s own Usthaad. But the resemblance is just limited to the base thread and Vedhalam never is a scene by scene copy of those two films.
So we have Ajith playing Ganesh moving to Kolkatta for his sister Tamiz’s studies. At certain stage ot the movie, our hero act as an informer to police for nabbing an international mafia gang comprising of three brothers.
Now the gang is in search of our hero who at a critical juncture reveal his hidden identity or Viswaroopam that takes us to some flash back episodes. There the identity of Vedhalam is revealed.
Actually, I liked the big revelation that was very loud but had everything that the mass would expect. But once the dual identity is settled once and for all, the film doesn’t offer the same level of entertainment that was there till that stage.
Director Siva uses the screen presence of Ajith but he could not completely make it successful. The brother-sister relationship shown from the start had too much of melodrama. Same goes with the flashback scenes that couldn’t make a difference to the overall feel.
Maximum hero boosting is given so that the mass and the hardcore fans of the Ajith take the film to a success. But as I said, neutral audience will find it hard to digest the movie especially the post-intermission happenings.
Ajith as I said have dual role (not a double role) to play here and was convincing in both to satisfy his ardent followers. While the larger than life character of Vedhalam was portrayed with style, the character of Ganesh was played in a simple way as he brought out an innocence for this role through his gestures and smile. Personally loved that transformation from Ganesh to Vedhalam.
The romantic track with Shruthi Hassan didn’t have any role to play and talking about Shruthi, she was at times crossing the tolerable level and to put it across straightly, I am not a keen follower of the actress.
Lakshmy Menon played the sister role quite smartly. The three villains looked caricature stuff and should have been presented in a better way. Suri, Kovai Sarala, Thambi Ramaiah and Ashwin are also part of the cast who didn’t have a prominent part to do in the film.
Cinematography was nice while edits were okay. Background by Anirudh was apt but at times it was too loud. But can’t complain since the demands of the character of Vedhalam do required somewhat heavy dose of BGM. Songs were mostly the ones we normally see in a mass movie, nothing praiseworthy. Felt some uneasiness in the way the mixing of background score was done.
Overall, this is strictly for the hardcore fans of Ajith. Normal audience would find it difficult to cope with this mass masala movie but till halfway stage I would say, its a watchable one. So if you can sit patiently for 127 minutes of Thala show, go for Vedhalam and if not you would find your journey on a bumpy road .
Review by Chandra Mohan