Mugamoodi(Mask) - Review

Never seeming to learn from our past experiences, myself and a few of my twitter buddies decided to go for the interestingly named Jiiva starrer - Mugamoodi (Mask).
Spoiler Alert: If you are planning to watch the movie, stop reading... or don't... the movie is predictable anyway.

After his previous outing - Yudham sei which was, I must admit, a formidable thriller, Mysskin tries out his hand at another genre - Superheroes. He must be given due credit to bring such a genre to Indian or rather Tamil Cinema (I don't consider mythology based movies in this genre). This is true new fiction. Having said that, the movie falls flat when it comes to screenplay.

The movie seems to be heavily influenced by Christopher Nolan's Batman series. This can be seen straight away from the posters to the trailer. Damn! Even the background score seems to be heavily influenced by the Dark Knight series' Hans Zimmer composition. Even the characterization seems to have been heavily influenced by Batman movies. Commissioner Gordon - Assistant Commissioner Gaurav, NYPD - TNPD, Batman - Mugamoodi, Lucius Fox - Girish Karnad, Alfred - the other "Thatha".

Portraying the jobless, aimless, angry young man (especially at his always-scolding-father) seems to be some kind of an allergy that Tamil cinema, in the recent days, has caught. Bruce Lee (Jiiva) wanting to be like the original Bruce Lee trains with a fairly less known Kung-Fu master in the suburbs of Chennai. The movie moves slowly where the director tries to set the stage for the story later. The first half is a la Billa 2 to Billa 1. Jiiva tries to bring in some students who can pay the fee to learn Kung-fu from his master, so that he can pay up the rent to his master's landlord, and prevent him from becoming homeless. He does this by intimidating a few so-called low class uneducated fish market vendors at the market. Here's where the heorin is introduced, the face of whom is not shown until the end of the next scene.

The story moves on...Jiiva trying to impress his new found love - Shakthi (Pooja Hegde) by lying that he's working at some company in a good post and gets his nose cut when his father yells at him revealing his true status right in front of the heroine. The build-up given to the heroine's intro is unwarranted considering that we have seen prettier ones.

Are you bored already? Yes, we were too! Looking at the watch, it was almost an hour and half and nothing yet. Then, in order to propose, Jiiva finally tries to reveal who Mugamoodi is to Pooja Hegde. That's when the story tries to become more interesting but in vain. The villain's men try to kill the Assistant commissioner (who's also Pooja's father) - played by Nazar - unimaginatively  or unnaturally named Gaurav. Jiiva being on the spot is handed the gun by the miscreant who escapes and Jiiva is framed. Nazar manages to recover from his Gunshot wound in the hospital during which the villain tries to kill him. The police officer who was Nazar's assistant is caught red handed while trying to kill a conscious Nazar who acts to be sleeping.

The worst portrayal of a villain is done by Narain, again unimaginatively named Angusamy, who, later is revealed to be the a fellow-inmate of Jiiva's Kung-fu master 22 years ago, yet looks much younger than the Kung-fu master. Most of his scenes he tries to mock his opponent, be it his fellow inmate or Jiiva. His movements, perhaps made to resemble some niche Kung-fu move, unintentionally becomes quite GAYish. Especially the way he repeats all the Superhero names - "Batman, Spiderman, Superman" is extremely annoying. The Villain is more comical than intimidating. There's a touch of Joker being tried out here but fails terribly.

I won't go into any more details, you ask is there more? Yes... sadly. This is a looong movie. I'll just get to the gist. The villain continues his childhood traits of being a thief and learns Kung-fu from his foster father who was a Kung-Fu master himself. He kills his foster father when he finds out that he was the one to inform the police about his thievery. Grows up to start a Kung-fu school with his partners in crime and continues stealing jewelry from houses and killing every single soul who comes in their way. Mugamoodi unintentionally comes in their way during one of their heists. The next thing you know, he's framed for shooting the ACP. After a lot of running around and kidnapping and hostage and ransom calls, the story lands at the Ennur port for the climax... which was again, very predictable. The hero's hands are tied up, the villain tries to kill him, after some confusing scene sans logic, it ends with the villain giving up holding on to his trademark hammer (a la "Yaavarum Nalam"?) and falling into the sea and hitting his head on to a metal jutting out from one of the cranes (perhaps to justify that he actually dies from the fall), after losing to Jiiva in his fight where Mugamoodi uses the last technique that his master had taught him but the villain not knowing it.

Are you a bit ticked off? Yes, that's what the movie does. Songs are forgettable. Music Director named "K", has done some interesting background score, as said earlier, heavily inspired by the Dark Knight series. The Title credits does a Marvel comics/DC comics style animation that we have so loved in the recent superhero movies, which is nice.

Overall - Very mediocre.

This character, however, has tremendous potential to be greatly developed. Perhaps someone could get some great writers and come up with a more captivating story and make a sequel. We could then, forget this annoying intro and move on, creating a home-bred superhero who could be out friendly neighbourhood superhero!

My take on Billa 2

Following up with a post from my friend Rajagopalan's review of the movie, which you can find here:

http://opinionsoftheraja.blogspot.in/2012/07/scarface-meets-godfather-and-other.html

Here's my take on it:

Slight disagreement about the music part, with Raja's review. Yuvan has had better ones. Also, the punch dialogue English translation loses its punch. Can't help that, of course. Just saying. The cinematography is breath-taking, indeed. Especially the scenes in so-called "Boravia" if such a country exists. The guy playing the Russian arms dealer was a perfect fit, except that he didn't "look" Russian.

Also, lot of logic misses. e.g. The scene where the villain calls Ajith on the phone and says that if he doesn't show up, Jasmine would die. Only one problem. He doesn't say where to come, but still the hero being a hero lands up at the right place. And the commandos having Jasmine at gun point, don't waste a single bullet on seeing the hero's envoy.
Showing NSG/army/navy/air-force commandos helpless, with just a shotgun in the hero's hand is a bit unnerving to me.


As for glam, Bruna sizzles indeed. Parvathy (Jasmine) was just wasted!

Looks like the producers wanted another prequel to be made. Probably Billa 3. So many questions still unanswered and more that came up with Billa 2! The song shot like a graphic novel leaves out a lot of detail, showing only certain aspects of the past. The scene where Ajith says "They didn't understand me then, I don't know if they will now" and then his sister saying "Will you never learn?" says there's more to come.

Life

 

This is an old gem that I found while cleaning my room the other day – A poem written (I’m guessing) by my Dad called “Life”.

“We do not see the life that lives,
we only see the forms it gives.
We do not see the soul that wakes,
we only see the course it takes.

 

And yet we know that life is here.
To regulate the day and year,
To register through joy & pain,
To take the loss & count the gain.”

 

In his own Handwriting:

P.S. There’s a name scribbled on top in a different handwriting. It spells “M. Borha”. I don’t know if this was presented to that person or was composed (not written, obviously, because the handwriting is my Dad’s) by that person. If you are that person, enjoy reminiscing this.  

Who moved my house?

Finally we've moved out to a larger, better, cleaner, greener house after living in one for 52 years continuously.
The thought of leaving your neighbors, friends, the familiarity, the bond of staying in a particular neighbourhood for over half a century for my family and my entire life was indeed scary. I will not lie. But we've overcome it and thanks to an ex-colleague and friend Nagaraj, we've moved into this new neighbourhood and have fallen in love with it despite its woes like unmetalled roads and frequent telephone disconnections (twice in the last one week - something to do with Airtel and not the neighbourhood).
Following up with my previous post where I mentioned about Perfect packers and movers - those idiots said they're booked at three last moment despite me booking 2 weeks in advance. So, finally after enquiring a lot, decided to go with Laxmi packets & movers for 7k plus the tip of 600 to the workers - I know that wasn't necessary but the kind of hardship they went through to get one if cupboards up - you should've been there to see it.
This was quite far away from my sister's college but she had only three days of exams left when we had moved in. It has been almost a month since we moved in and we have gotten easily accustomed to the new way of life, here.
Looks like we are better than our neighbours downstairs in gathering information and getting our utilities in place.
We've transferred our gas connection, found where the post office is, the cheapest grocer, the cable TV, telephone, internet, everything's setup and running. Our neighbour, on the other hand are yet to figure out most of these things despite being here for more than two years, now. B-)
Like everywhere else, even here, electricians, carpenters and plumbers all act like they are Lords and getting their appointment must be harder than meeting the CM.
After a lot of haggling we've got the plug points and the plumbing ready for the fridge and washing machine but yet to get some nails nailed onto the walls. Life is very difficult without those wall clocks and clothes hangers.
So, apart from these few hiccups, we've begun to call this new house, our home. That's it for now. See you next time. Until then, happy reading.

Walking the clouds

Remember Morgan Freeman in "Bruce Almighty"? Yes. He played God!

Now check this video out:

Yeah! That's me in the plane, on the way back to India. Felt like God was talking to me!