Venkatarangan TNC

Dasavathaaram (?????????)

Dasavathaaram (?????????) Movie

The hugely anticipated release of Kamal Hasan's mega budget movie - Dasavathaaram got released yesterday after many delays. Apart from the inherent delays due to the complexity of producing the movie, there were many court cases against the movie and the producer V.Ravichandran had to even change his film production company's name from OSCAR to AASCAR due to a legal notice from Hollywood (Economic Times news yesterday) in the last few days.

Kamal stars in 10 roles in the movie. The movie(details here) is released in almost all theatres in the city (and in the state) and in all the shows. Adding to this Government has also allowed few extra shows at 9AM, etc. , even then when I checked with few theatres I was told the movie is full for next 15 days. Luckily my wife got two tickets for today (second day of the movie) 11:25AM show at INOX City Centre. Show started 10-15 late as the earlier show got delayed as the movie is a long one nearly 3 hours with only a brief 5 minutes intermission. There was a huge queue to even get into the theatres :-)

The story line of the movie is very simple and nothing exceptional - just a routine action chase film. The first half of the movie was boring and very long, the intermission came only after 2 hours. Kamal has done the story, screenplay and dialogue, so in his signature style he has inserted few atheist touches - the 13th Century "Nambi" story possibly hurting a bit of religious sentiments. The second half was more interesting, especially where he brings along all the characters into the single climax moment. Lot of hard work seems to have gone into making of the movie - in the direction, acting, makeup, stunts, planning, etc. which has to appreciated greatly. Tamil movie industry has been elevated few steps with this movie - no doubts on that. The story and music could have been better.

The ten roles he dons are:

Rangaraja Nambi - 13th Century Vaishnavaite
Govind Ramasamy -the "Hero", a scientist
Christian Fletcher - Villain (Ex-CIA Agent)
Balaram Naidu - The funny CBI officer with nice Telugu Accent
George Bush - American President (surprising why Kamal wanted to do this role, compared to other roles not very impressive)
Avtar Singh - A Punjabi singer
Shinghen Narahasi - Japan Marshal arts master (Impressive fighting scenes)
Krishnaveni - Iyengar Great grandmother (Excellent in the makeup)
Vincent Poovaraagan - Social Activist (nice black skin makeup)
Kalifullah Khan - The 7 Feet Tall Role (An antitode to the Aboorva Sagatharagal shorter Kamal)

Movie is all about Kamal, with only two other characters having some role - Asin and Baskar. Kamal has roped in Jayaprada for a role in a Tamil Movie that too a song after a long time.