VidaaMuyarchi Review..!!
VidaaMuyarchi is a very generic action drama that fails to raise the stakes due to long drawn-out sequences.
Rating – 2/5
The curious case about VidaaMuyarchi was how possible well, Magizh Thirumeni would be able to make an Indian adaptation of a 90s old school Hollywood thriller film. One could imagine the difficulty to bring nativity and commercial flavors that caters to the taste of Indian audiences. Another daunting task for the makers was to do away with any consistency issues that might have happened due to prolonged delays of the film. So, the story of VidaaMuyarchi happens in Azerbaijan, revolving around a Tamil couple, played by Ajith Kumar (Arjun) & Trisha (Kayal). In this remake, Magizh adds a short romantic track. These episodes shift through different phases of their life and could see Ajith in three different get-ups. It is evident they have done an excellent job in the editing table to avoid any continuity errors. Although it was a long 20-minute episode, their chemistry was subtle and breezy for the most part.
The pacing issue was showing off slowly, each scenes starting to blurt out too much details which was more than necessary. Honestly, the screenplay needed a fast-paced execution to generate the much-needed thrills. It was killing the excitement, as the film was not moving to a high stakes situation. There are several shots that should have been edited out before the major plot point, which could have been brought much earlier in the film. But this approach might have worked if they had gotten into the plot straightaway by avoiding the romantic angle. The stakes could have been raised regularly and thereby developing the characters more precisely. Instead here, it tests the patience of the audience who are expecting an exciting event in the film for more than 40 minutes.
The major issue with the film starts here. Arjun’s desperate attempts lead to repetitive conversations and encounters with the locals of Azerbaijan. Magizh opted to use the native language for the locals. It seemed more intentional to make the desperate attempts of Arjun look more real. His dialect and struggle to pick words to converse with the locals was convincing. But on the other hand, the overuse of the local language wasn’t entirely helping us to connect with the protagonist lost in a foreign land. The issue is with the conversations and staged episodes with the locals that is hardly perceivable as a desperate man’s quest. In the film, Arjun comes to a bar and interact with the locals on two different occasions. These episodes add no value to the screenplay, instead it stretches the plot with tiring conversations.
After all this, the intermission episode is very basic and it is the first time, Arjun clashes with the entire antagonists of the film. This reiterates the fact that the film rarely had any exciting situations in the slow-paced first 80 minutes or so. The tricky part is that the story of the film takes place in a day and it feels like they have treated this way too realistically. Now, there is a bit of a surprise at the intermission point but sadly they failed to escalate tension from here on. Imagine in an action thriller, when most of the time was spent to focus on shots that deliberately slows down the pacing of the film. For example, Arjun is made to wait for a long time on an isolated road, before he finds the problem. The scene literally stops there for some time, where the frame rests on them for a longer period. Similarly, there are far too many shots focussing on Arjun who is seen walking from one place to another. At several times, the conversations are so slow, adding more misery.
Ajith Kumar is returning to the silver screen after a long 2-year hiatus. There were a lot of expectations from a star like him but Arjun is not a new role to him. It was a very laid-back role and some of his nuances reminded of Valimai’s Arjun. As an actor, he finds it hard to express grief. The hospital scene and his helpless reaction to Trisha’s revelation was not doing justice to his reputation. It also seemed like there are a lot of issues with the character defined for Ajith. There was no transformation absolutely visible on Arjun that leads him to a desperate man frantically searching for his wife. He was level headed for most time and that doesn’t generate any tension. Additionally, there is an exclusive track for Arjun & Ragina’s characters. They remind us of Joker & Harley Quin. They even have a version of Arkham Asylum here as well. It felt like, Magizh could have explored their stories in parallel, thus giving far more importance to their characters. The crux of VidaaMuyarchi lies in their story and this would have helped to build intense antagonists. Rest of the cast including Trisha gets sidelined or less scope to perform.
The highly anticipated action sequences in the film were a major letdown. There were only a couple of action sequences, where one happens inside a hummer. This was probably the best sequence in the entire movie that was staged as an adrenaline rushing sequence. And the most ironic thing was that the final action sequences got rushed in a slow-paced screenplay. After going painstakingly slow for more than 2 hours, the final 15 minutes just happened at once. The staging of this action set piece was very ordinary, probably to keep the protagonist away from becoming a larger-than-life hero. Finally, the rich productional values, eerie landscapes and technical finesse are visible but VidaaMuyarchi pretends to be too realistic for a generic action-thriller template film.