Mersal Movie Review
Need an abrupt description of Mersal in a line? A disturbingly provocative social issue, emotional drama of revenge and well packaged entertainment… Filmmaker Atlee on his second collaboration with Thalapathy Vijay aims bigger in terms of grand scale production, socio-commercial genre and a massive portrayal of mass hero. In fact, the way he has tried projected Vijay in this film is much more matured than in ‘Theri’. Especially, the body language and diversified body language among three avatars of Vijay are very well designed. On his part, actor Vijay has exerted his inmost heart and soul into every role, especially the ‘Thalapathy aka Vetrimaaran’ characterization.
If you’re looking out for the story of Mersal, it might break the suspense or turn out to be abrupt spoiler. To narrate it in couple of lines, the film opens with Dr. Maran (Vijay) arrested on being alleged of kidnapping few staffs from hospital. Sathyaraj, playing a senior police officer gets to trap him and interrogates him on this criminal act. As the story unfolds ahead, we are bounded to series of unexpected twists and turns.
Mersal is something phenomenal
Director Atlee and writer Vijayendra Prasad have tried balancing the script with equal mass and emotional moments. Usually, a Vijay film would possess a stereotypical package of mass introductions, fight sequences, a title song followed by falling love with a girl, duet number, clash with baddies and settling the score. But the screenplay out here in Mersal is something phenomenal. In fact, first ever Vijay film in the recent times to have a duet number in first order followed by couple of consecutive tracks all winded up by first hour. If audiences are made to feel sympathetic towards certain characters, then they’ll become eventually get commuted from audience zone to participants of onscreen drama. This is achieved through the well written script and dialogues.
“When grinders, mixies and TVs are given at free of cost, why not medicines”, “Singapore is a country that has 7% GST and it gives free medicines, then why not India with 28% make it available.”
SJ Surya gets into the shoes of classy deadly villain
“How many of you are healthy here? If so, just go for a medical check up and you’ll be tagged with some problems. Medical tests are nothing but business tactics.” Such dialogues just pierces through the senses letting audience get imbibed to the tale…
Well, to make sure that it doesn’t turn out to be yet another socio-centric film, Atlee tries to balance with missies like Kajal Aggarwal and Samantha. Nevertheless, Nithya Menen becomes the absolute show stealer. While many would have envisaged that she might get a very small role when compared to other ladies in the film, its turns vice-versa. SJ Surya gets into the shoes of classy deadly villain. Although. he doesn’t get to perform much, he does what is required for the role. But after a long time, we get to see a powerful villain in Tamil cinema on the likes of Raghuvaran and Prakash Raj.
Cinematographer Vishnu deserves great appreciations
AR Rahman’s background score for the flashback sequences stand out to be a major attraction and the song ‘Aalaporaan Tamizhan’ is extraordinarily shot.
Cinematographer Vishnu deserves great appreciations for rendering wonderful visuals in both songs. Especially, his work in flashback portions needs special mention with a particular tone. Not many would have noted that most of 80s portions were shot using Green Matt and CG backdrops, but had the village effect. Thanks to CG artists for getting it done with perfect note.
Mersal serves the best treat for Vijay fans
Vadivelu evokes laughter in first half and he appears throughout the film. Sathyan, Kovai Sarala, Naan Kadavul Rajendran and Yogi Babu appear for few minutes.
On the whole, Mersal serves the best treat for Vijay fans and it connects with audiences for its basic theme as well.
