Sadhu Miranda and Kalloori

As I am relocating to Bangalore on the last week of this month, few days are left for me in Chennai to see as many Tamil movies as possible. I am hurryingly seeing selected movies. Yesterday and day before yesterday I saw two Tamil movies – Kalloori and Sadhu Miranda – and one English movie National Treasure. Kalloori was in my mind from long time back. Surprisingly, I have not seen any Hindi movies after ‘Chak de’ and ‘Bhool bhulaiyya’. I am very nervous that I am not able to see even “Taare Zameen Par”, as the film is mesmerizing people day after day. Adding to this, tickets are not available for current booking, because, the film is running in very few theaters in Chennai. It’s very difficult to get tickets in posh theaters like Satyam Cinemas or Inox Multiplex. Unfortunately, both these theaters are near to my residence.

The other films in my mind are “Pidichirukku”, “Asoka” (Both are Tamil movies), “Boot” (Malayalam) and “Sunday” (Hindi) apart from Taare Zameen Par.

SADHU MIRANDA

I went to “Sadhu Miranda” only after seeing its review in media. The movie is a thriller with a good dose of comedy. Though the film is a worthy one to watch for, somewhere it lacks in quality. The Malayalee origin director Siddique is known for his penchant for comedies. His adaptation of comedy into this thrilling movie looks very natural. This is the main saving grace for the movie and its director.

The story begins with a bank robbery by a gang, which we later come to know that Ram Mohan (donned by Abbas), his brother Shiva, and a minister (done by Telugu actor Kota Srinivasarao) belong to it. While escaping from the police the gang kills a young lady. Then later on, Sundara Murthy, the brother of that lady, goes on the mission of avenging for the death of his sister. Murthy first gets hold of Shiva through drugs. Then he traps Minister by acting as Shiva. Ram Mohan’s girl friend is Priya. She is also the daughter of a bank manager who was killed during the robbery. Sundara Murthy uses Priya, Shiva, and Minister to make Ram Mohan to come back to India from America. Then Sundara Murthy tries to trap Ram Mohan, who by now senses the danger and gets escaped. The game of escapes continues till the truth won over false seekers.

Prasanna as Sundara Murthy has done well. His innocent expressions gel well with the going of the movie. Abbas, as usual, justifies his role. Kavya Madhavan as a lead female looks awesome. But the main highlight of the movie is comedy track. Bhaskar, Karuna and the comedy gang make us roaring with laughter. The comedy is simply superb. This Malayalam style of comedy makes a good change from Vadivelu and Vivek brand of comedies. Moreover, the comedy track runs along with the story. And the plus stops here as there is nothing exciting in the scenes other than comedy track. Siddique could have worked more on the screen play. Nevertheless, “Sadhu Miranda” can be watched once without second thought.

KALLOORI

Good product from Balaji Shaktivel. ‘Kalloori’ is the third movie as a director for Balaji. He had earlier given ‘Samurai’ and ‘Kadhal’. Though Vikram starrer ‘Samurai’ failed, the second movie ‘Kadhal’ became a stupendous success. In ‘Kalloori’, Balaji has livened up to the expectations that rose after the success of ‘Kadhal’.

Kalloori is a story of friendship. A group of friends who came from the same school joins Government Arts College for BA. Muthu, Ramesh, Kaya, Nagarani, Kamakshi, Saleema and other friends are from hard background. One is a son of stone worker; one is the leading care-taker of her family; one is the son of a drunkard police etc., etc. Shobhana, the girl from a convent school in Bangalore, comes and joins this college. After initial hiccups, she became a friend of Muthu and co. Shobhana and Muthu develop intimate feeling for each other even when they tried hard to avoid it. This group of friends was committed to maintain pure friendship without any contamination of love or other feelings. In this backdrop, Muthu and Shobhana were in dilemma of expressing their true feelings outside. But the fate shows its harshness when Shobhana and other two girls were charred to death after a mob of rioters put fire to the bus near Chittoor.

The story is simple. But Balaji shaktivel has given life to each and every character. The character of Ramesh, who is a great chatter, looks very real. Bharani has acted very natural as Ramesh. Akhil has done the character of Muthu. He looks tailor-made for that role. Not only Akhil, all the persons acted in this movie look tailor-made for their role. The credit definitely should go to the director.

There are good dialogues in this movie. Shobhana says in the movie, “…my father and forefathers are all experts in education. There is not much greatness in me studying well. But, you people are coming to college with so many difficulties. You are all great…” Really great!

There is another scene that captures well when Shobhana encourages Muthu asking him to concentrate on the National Athletic Meet at any cost. Chak de Kalloori.