marudamalai - the review.

After a brief sabbatical from filmdom by which everyone forgot about him, action-king arjun comes back with yet another cop flick “marudamalai”

The story

The hero, marudamalai, realises his father’s dream and becomes a police officer and is posted to a seemingly innocuous town, Naachiyarpuram that is a reserved constituency for the 20% minority. The local bigwig Masi, who belongs to the upper caste and the majority and cannot bear the thought of having a lower caste MLA, controls the town. Hence, he uses his power to stop elections in the town. The election commission decides after 16 years to finally have an election in naachiyarpuram irrespective of the consequences. The election and its aftermath and the clash between Arjun and Masi form the story.

The first half is just out of the world. Absolutely hilarious. Vadivelu, as ‘Encounter Ekambaram’, carries the movie on his shoulders. He does it total ease and complete élan. His panache is evident in the scene where he says, “risk edukarudhu ellam enakku rusku saapidara madiri”. (Non-tamil folks pardon me, but it’s too good a play on words and you would lose the joke if I translate) His English-speaking style is SO reminiscent of Shivaji Ganesan. He keeps reinventing himself time and again with more emphasis on his accent and face expressions. Full marks to him. Arjun does little else other than be Vadivelu’s sidekick here.

Its high time that the hero and heroine don’t get caught in a lip-lock every time they meet. Arjun and Nila keep kissing each other while slipping, while walking, while getting up. God!!!! I hardly get such stuff happen to me.

The second half has Arjun as an all-in-all saviour of the town. He bashes up masi, lands him in jail, kills his brothers, cavorts around with his “cousin”, romances Nila and is the general do-gooder.

Director Suraj has proved he is a fine protégé of Sundar C. the comedy sequences are excellent and provide ample laughs. However, it was a definite howler on his part to try and drill the importance of voting to the public. Karu Palaniappan’s “sivapadhikkaram” should have been a glaring example of not taking up social issues to the common man. There are some things that the average Indian can still not absorb.

Nila has not much to do except dress voluptuously and act even more voluptuous. She has shown some nice dress sense here. She wears clothes that hide away that hideously excess fat around her belly, remember the song “mayilirage” in Aa Aaa???

Raghuvaran gets some screen space after a long time but he looks very sick. Can it be drugs?

Music is by Imman supposedly. No comments.

En masse, it should be a fine movie for Arjun and we would have to face the ignominy of more movies of this genre from him.