Movie Review: Anniyan
sarva dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vrajah
aham tvah sarva papebhyo mokshayisyami ma suchah
[Abandon all your dharma and surrender unto Me.
I shall deliver you from all sinful deeds. Do not fear.]
If you have missed, that is what the Anniyan says everytime he goes about doing his stuff. The verses are from The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 18, Text 66).
Ambi – an innocent youngster from an orthodox Iyengar family who goes strictly by the book on everything, right from not crossing the Stop line in a traffic signal to reciting the abhivadanam while prostrating before elders to lending a helping hand to someone hit on the road. Remo – A flashy modern day youth who falls in love with an orthodox Iyengar girl. Anniyan – The man! Goes about punishing anyone who acts against law and follows the ancient script of Karuda Puranam to choose the mode of punishment. And then the grand finale! Anniyan!!
I was not talking about three different persons here. Neither was I talking about the same person.
Despite parallels to a few other movies, Anniyan scores in its own distinct ways. The movie opens with a typical agraharam style locality where the innocent Ambi (Vikram) laments everyday about all the little to big law breaking fallouts happening around him. Vikram also plays the part of Remo and Anniyan and deserves complete credit for handling the three characters with startling distinctness.
Though the core theme of the movie resembles Shankar’s earlier work Indian, Anniyan has more than a social theme to it. Drawing from the psychology of a kid who gets perturbed after losing his little sister, to a youth who has been waiting 7 years (and still counting) to reveal his love, Shankar’s screenplay has weaved an exquisite balance in handling the sticking-together of seemingly independent pieces of story mingled with a few doses of religious hints.
A virtually unknown Peter Hayen makes his presence felt, with his stunt settings that has been based in the movie at a martial arts school. But the 360 degree revolving of the camera with the fighters frozen in mid air a la The Matrix occurs just a little too frequent in the almost 15 minute sequence.
Sujatha shows his class again with his dialogues that mixes comedy (anchored by Vivek) right into the crux of the story and does not deviate a bit from the mainstream at any point.
Harris Jeyraj has not done much to quell the Rahman'ised view of a Shankar movie. I would still feel AR Rahman would have done a better music. The background score whenever anniyan rises does not really provoke any sense of thrill. However Harris deserves credit for altleast a couple of numbers. Iyengar veettu azhage being my personal favorite (in fact, that could rather have read Iyengar aathu azhage). If you feel there is more reason to my liking than just the song being good, then you are not mistaken.
Considering a few distant parallels with Chandramuki, Shankar certainly knew better when he decided to hold the release of Anniyan not to get blown by the Chandramuki wave. However, if there were a tie for an award between Vikram and Jyothika, I would still vote for Jyothika.