Total "Enthira"tainment!

Cross-posting the review I wrote in ForumKeralam.

Theatre: Fame Lido, Forum Value Mall, Bangalore
Show: 2nd October, 4:40 PM
Status: House Full

First things first. I am not a fan of Rajnikanth and seldom hides my disdain for the brand of "style" the man is known for over the years. For me, Rajni films are either tolerable or a pain to watch. I had my apprehensions with the movie and had a constant dread after spending Rs 400 for a ticket. By the end of 15 minutes, my fears started evaporating. Endhiran is the Rajni film I absolutely loved. Hats off to the man himself and Shankar.

The plot is wafer thin as is the case with all Shankar films. Quite welcome that Shankar has made no attempt to steal the story from somewhere. Rajnikanth, a robotics scientist, makes an android capable of superhuman feats and models the look after himself. Things go wrong after the doctor introduces emotion to make the robot better. The robot falls in love with his girlfriend and threatens the world with a little help from the doctor's jealous mentor.

I loved Aishwarya Rai in the movie. Basically, she does her job as an ornament (a delectable one at that!) and does not have anything to act ala Raavanan. After a long time it was refreshing to see a normal intro for a hero, that too from somebody who has a stamp on the intro scenes as Rajnikanth. Director has succeeded in making the scientist Rajnikanth as human as possible. A terrible workaholic, prone to mistakes, jealous...the feelings which are unknown to the "normal" Rajnikanth. Rajni does his part decently to his credit. The robot Rajnikanth was simply mindblowing. I always thought Rajnikanth would make a great villain and he proves it. The Robot in the first half is an emotion less being which reminded me of Arnold in Terminator. In the second half, he turns into an evil monster. Rajni steals the show as the scheming, snarling supervillain. Other actors did not have much to do. Danny Denozgpa is upto the mark as the mentor jealous of his protege's success.

Music from Rahman is pretty average. The only song I really liked was the Endhiran song towards the end. The songs are shot extremely well. Songs oscillate between shot in exotic locales and imaginary locales. Lavish and stylishly shot. Choreography left much to be intended in my opinion. At some places it was really good and in most places it was just average.

Now to the best part. Graphics. I have never seen such perfection and polish regarding graphics in India. In fact, Endhiran would easily match a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster in the graphics part. One aspect I would like to mention is that, you would never see some of these graphics in Hollywood movies specifically because they don't have a compulsion towards songs. Almost all the graphics work in the movie are brilliant or close enough to being brilliant to allude most of the prying eyes.

My reaction to the movie was Holy S**t! My friend, a Rajni fan's reaction was Meh! According to him, the movie does not have anything that a Rajni fan would expect. No punch dialogues, no introduction, nothing to make his pulse race. May be this could work in the favour of the movie since the movie could have an universal appeal beyond Rajni fans.

TL;DR: Endhiran is a landmark movie in Indian cinema. Watch it for the jaw dropping graphics. Entertainment guaranteed!

Rating: 7.5/10