The Next Action Hero?

When I wrote about action sequences in Tamil films, I mentioned my thought that the slot of a real action hero is open in Tamil cinema today. Fights are an undeniable and enjoyable part of our masala films but our fights have increasingly become over-the-top, implausible stunts that our heroes are shown to execute, rather clumsily, through graphics and/or wires. And the stunts that someone actually performs are usually done by the unsung heroes - the stunt doubles. So by a real action hero, I mean a hero who does his own stunts. And I don't mean the kind of lame leaps or jumps that our heroes actually do(usually in slo-mo) either. I mean real action that gets our pulses racing and our adrenaline flowing, like the Parkour sequences we saw in Casino Royale or District B13.

Reading about the audio launch of Surya - One Man Army made me feel like that was the slot Vijay Chiranjeevi is going for. He is the son of Stunt director Jaguar Thangam, who is producing and directing the film to launch his son. The function seems to have been well-attended('Jayam' Ravi, Satyaraj, Kushboo and Perarasu are some of the attendees mentioned) and the speeches of the guests seem to point to Vijay having some great stunt scenes. Ofcourse there's the tiny problem that Vijay looks more like one of the villain's henchman rather than the hero. I guess Surya's release will tell if his stunts are good enough to make us overlook that and accept him as a hero (I think Ajay Devgan is the son of a stunt director too and was criticized for his looks when he was introduced. Look where he is now!).