‘Beast’ film overview: Vijay’s newest is a boring and tedious affair

Comedy as a style has undergone a sea change in Tamil cinema. A few many years in the past, the comic, normally the hero’s finest buddy, appeared in scenes that have been inserted between track and motion sequences, thus offering a number of fodder to Tamil comedy TV channels. That ‘separate comedy’ monitor is a factor of the previous now, for the reason that entry of new-age administrators. Nelson, one among them, has been a pioneer in pushing comedy to the forefront in very important sequences, no matter the temper of the scene. This was evident — and labored to a big extent — in  Kolamavu Kokila and Physician.

This trope fails him in Beast, Vijay’s newest movie, working in theatres. Vijay is forged as Veera Raghavan, a RAW agent who can dodge 100 bullets and but come out unscathed. The primary couple of minutes of the movie showcase him on the Indian border, the place he does one thing that he finally ends up regretting. We are able to really feel the why — or the emotional heft — on this scene.

However that, sadly, goes lacking in the remainder of the movie. You additionally don’t really feel the jitters that should be current in a tense state of affairs like this. Someplace within the hullabaloo of a Chennai mall, which is held hostage by a bunch of terrorists, each emotion and logic, to a big extent, go for a toss.

Can Veera Raghavan save these harmless civilians? Why have the terrorists captured a Chennai mall?

Beast as a topic — a hostage state of affairs in a mall, and a hero prepared to avoid wasting them — is correct up Nelson’s alley, going by his previous document. The interplay between the characters might need made for some rib-tickling scenes, however sadly, it’s solely VTV Ganesh’s occasional humorous one-liners that we’re left with. Vijay’s interplay with Selvaraghavan, taking part in the mediator between the Authorities and the terrorists, appears much more informal. The romance with Pooja Hegde and its complete set-up may have been completely averted, and it nonetheless wouldn’t have made a lot of a distinction.

A nonetheless from Beast
| Picture Credit score: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

By star-worshipping the hero and showcasing many slow-motion sequences and heavy-duty motion scenes, Nelson falls right into a entice that he fastidiously averted in his earlier Physician. Right here too, very similar to Sivakarthikeyan within the earlier outing, Vijay is aloof and expression-less. However in contrast to that movie, he prefers to make use of extra brawn than mind… which is among the many huge issues of Beast.

The writing is a giant letdown, particularly within the second half after the hostage state of affairs will get beneath management, and the dearth of a robust villain to problem the lead stands out sorely. Beast comes throughout as a really rushed job, when the director and group got down to make a movie inside a restricted timeframe, thus working out of concepts. There’s Anirudh’s music, with the ‘Jolly O Gymkhana’ track taking part in in the course of the closing credit, and a few VTV Ganesh gags if you happen to actually care, however Beast dishes out little or no else.

Beast is presently working in theatres