Film Review | Thalaivaa
Make way for Vijay the Great
The new Tamil movie Thalaivaa (Leader) features two-and-a-half Vijays. One is the Tamil superstar, whose mere presence is usually accompanied by a cacophony of whistles, cheers and ringing cash registers. The second is the director, whose movies include Madrasapattinam and Deiva Thirumagal. The half bit is the ghost of the character played by Amitabh Bachchan in so many movies in the seventies and eighties that the name became synonymous with a grumpy vigilante with parental issues.
Thalaivaa doesn’t only reference Bachchan movies like Deewar. This is film as bibliography, so there are citations from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Mani Ratnam’s Nayakan (based on The Godfather), Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar (also inspired by The Godfather) and Vijay’s own back catalogue. No wonder the movie clocks at three hours and two minutes.
N Santhanam’s off-kilter comedy makes it easier to sit through the slack opening set-up, which showcases Vijay’s dancing skills, while the superstar comes into his own when Thalaivaa enters action mode. The filmmaker gives the movie a lived-in texture by shooting on location in several places in Mumbai—he makes good use of Worli Fort and the fishing village, in particular—and some scenes are snappily directed, but it is truly amazing that he takes as long as he does to get to the inevitable and predictable climax. The idea, presumably, is to give Vijay devotees an epic experience, so non-fans of the actor, who masks his limited acting range by adopting a cool and detached air, can safely stay at home. The opening credits, a roll call of historical personalities ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Mao Zedong, make it clear that Vishwa is in good company. But at 182 minutes, there’s just about so much greatness we can take.
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