Villu

After turning director, Prabhu Deva helmed a couple of love stories in Telugu. But when he moved to Tamil, he changed tracks, opting to direct Vijay in Pokkiri, a remake of the Telugu blockbuster of the same name. The film was a huge success in Tamil too and the duo has joined hands again for Villu. Apart from the actor-director team, the film has a couple of more things in common with Pokkiri, as it has the same villain and is also being released for Pongal. But the similarities end there. Where Pokkiri was a fast-paced action film, Villu is an old-fashioned, amateurish revenge flick. Pokkiri was no classic but next to Villu, it sure looks like one.

After dealing with Raka, one of the kingpins of a network of arms and drug dealers, Pugazh(Vijay) makes his way to a wedding, where he impresses Janavi(Nayanthara), the bride's friend. Turns out his romancing Janavi was only to get to her dad JD(Prakashraj), another important man in the arms and drug network. Pugazh and Janavi travel to Munich to meet JD and Pugazh runs into Shaan, the third key player in the network.

After some initial action, the film settles down as Vijay romances Nayanthara and irritates Vadivelu. The comedy is of the familiar variety and mostly involves Vadivelu getting hurt in a variety of ways as he is electrocuted, scalded, pushed into a well and ridden down a flight of stairs. But many of the gags do work and make us laugh. He is out of the picture once the action moves to Munich but Prabhu Deva, to give the action-heavy second half some relief, brings him back for two scenes. The two sequences - one of which sees him fight a CGI cow in a scene from Kung-Pow Chicken and the other sees him dance to a few recent, popular film songs - are plain intolerable and make us forget the laughs earlier.

The romance is even less of a success than the comedy. Though there are scenes(like the one where Nayanthara shouts at Vijay but an enamored Vijay hears the words coming out of her mouth in a musical fashion) that remind us that Prabhu first honed his directorial skills in a very sweet love story(the Telugu original of Something Something Unakkum Enakkum), the track skirts vulgarity at many moments and consists of cliched elements like Nayanthara hiring goondas to beat up Vijay and Vijay saving the bride from some troublesome relatives who want to stop the wedding.

There is a lot of technology in use once Vijay goes up against the bad guys in Munich. So we get blu-ray discs to store the villain's information(though Sriman and Anandraj, who are obviously not early adopters, still refer to them as CDs) and a hideout with palm print and voice recognition technology (though there seems to be no point to showing us all this security without a heist sequence to show how someone beats it) that somehow leads to a tunnel that's straight out of Resident Evil. We also get a peek into the future with the world's first wireless DVD-reader, which is apparently in Prakashraj's sunglasses as he scans a DVD by just looking at it! A well-staged stunt sequence in a plane that is actually thrilling manages to sneak into the movie but the rest of the proceedings are amateurish and silly.

There are a couple of surprises in the plot but once Vijay's past and mission are revealed (via a flashback that proves that Vijay and Prabhu Deva might have taken the phrase 'one man army' a little too literally), it is clear that all the aforementioned technology simply hides the oldest story in the book. As Vijay's mission nears closure, all the technology and style so far give way to really old-fashioned sentiments. As we are forced to endure spiteful villagers, crying wives, weird punishments and melodramatic surprises, we begin to wonder if the movie has suddenly been hijacked by the likes of P.Vasu, Perarasu and Hari.

Vijay does what's expected of him, dancing and fighting with energy. He's cut down on the finger-swishing and punch dialogs, a welcome change and trades those in for some designer wear and stylish looks. Nayan continues her recent tradition of mistaking innerwear for outerwear but is adequate for the little that is needed from a heroine in a Vijay movie. Prakashraj plays another routine villain. Even the token melodious number in earlier Vijay movies like Kuruvi has been dropped as Devi Sriprasad delivers a soundtrack filled with fast numbers that Vijay can shake a leg too. Jalsa... is the only number that sounds good while Nee Kobappattaal... has some nice lyrics and a somewhat interesting picturization with multiple Vijays on screen. Hey Rama Rama... finds Kushboo shaking a leg with Vijay and Prabhu Deva too making his expected appearance for a beat-filled interlude.