Porkkalam

Porkkalam is one of its kind Tamil movie, no doubt about it. Ever since I saw the teaser where Kishore blows away a Ford Endeavour with his punch, I knew I wanted to watch this movie.

A couple of years ago, Hindi cinema industry witnessed a paradigm shift where a bunch of fresh directors and story writers emerged bridging the gap between commercial cinema and art cinema. This resulted in the first copies of what is called as Multiplex movies (Mithya, Bheja Fry, Khoshla ka Ghosla, Manorama 6 Feet under and more...) which were good in content, made at shoestring budgets and targetted at a specific group of audience rather than the masses. Porkkalam probably confirms the arrival of a similar trend  in Tamil cinema. Bandi Saroj Kumar, the director of the movie excels in extracting the best from almost all the departments. You are bound to get surprised when you learn the 21 year old has not gained any prior experience as assistant director. When he had gone to join the factory, RGV had apparently sent him back saying "if you have a good story go ahead and make it yourself"

From the point of time-line I felt the suspense (though a good one) in the first half is a bit lengthy since you are not given enough clues that there is in fact a suspense in the movie. Only thing the viewer keeps wondering is the reason or motive behind the disconnected subplots and action blocks. If the reveal would have been a bit more earlier and the sequences connected to one another it would have been even better. Nevertheless the canvas of the movie and the action sequences do stand out. Kudos to Super Subburayan team for a having meaningful single-blow actions. Music is good and even though misplaced a couple of songs are good to hear. The sparingly used of special FX is also appreciable. The very short dialogues and absence of it in some places have to be appreciated. The flash back could have been a bit more crisp. The second half of the movie takes the normal B and C center tracks.

Kishore is just too good with his performance and so is Sathyan. While the character of the protagonist is etched very well, the same is not the case with others except probably Sathyan. For instance, "a corrupt police officer with ethics" alone does not make the character interesting and believable ! And what a waste of Sampath, a highly capable actor ! I felt Tinu Anand and Biju Menon were not needed at all for the movie. Remove their portions, the movie would still look good. In spite of making a visually striking and different this movie would still fall under the category where the heroine's role is under developed. I mean, with all her problems back home why would she fall in love ? Is it because love is Blind?

Why were there so many English sentences in the dialogue?
Why were there so many Fade-to-Black and Slow motion?
Why was there only one gun in whole Lanka and that too with the hero?
How come the villain's brother was not able to realise a crucial fact about the hero when he was in the hero's custody for almost a week, but finds out the very next day in an action sequence?

and of course..."Why two orders?" - the "A-few-good-men" question. - If the hero is not ashamed , if he is so intelligent, capable and confident to overcome his weakness, why does he have to hide his it from the world ?

I would love to see what Saroj has in store next.