Ayan Movie Review

Per my resolution to watch all movies starring Tamanna, I forced Raghu to book tickets to this movie Ayan. Not that he had to be forced to book the tickets, but the force was more on the date. I wanted to see the movie on the release day itself (the traditional First Day First Show style), so that I don’t get influenced by what the "general bublig" thinks about the movie.

Unlike my twisted review of Padikadhavan, this time around, I will try to actually review the movie.

Here is a quick summary:
1. This movie is simply yet another commercial venture
2. Movie can be enjoyed only by die-hard fans of Suriya
3. Tamanna fans better go in with few bottles of water and glucose packets; also paper towels to clean up the area.
4. Movie has very good visuals - i.e. the outdoor locations have been well captured and presented
5. Some misguided folks may actually appreciate the movie!

Now, the scene-by-scene (almost) details:

Suriya is a post-graduate student who works for Prabhu who in turn does a whole lot of illegal activities. But he is not your typical dada or goon who goes around in SUVs with 20 stooges at his beck and call. That is because he is primarily in the soft side of cheating - making pirated copies of new movies. And Suriya is his man-Friday who goes across the globe (read Malaysia) to get the necessary original prints.

In the early stage of the movie itself, these guys get a tip-off about a raid and escape from the clutches of the cops, but leave the evidence behind. The Inspector rounds up Prabhu and since these guys are all hand-in-glove, he asks Prabhu to get someone who can be arrested. Even as Suriya is about to volunteer, there enters Jagan (you may have seen him very often in TV shows) who apparently, had been trying to get into Prabhu's employment.

With this act, Suriya becomes good friends with Jagan. The duo then make a trip to a place we are supposed to accept as being Congo. That's where we get to see the other side of Prabhu's business - being a middle-man in an international diamond smuggling network. The plot seemingly gets interesting at this point. These two guys collect a cache of diamonds and bring it back to their hotel. There is an attempt made to steal these diamonds and Suriya runs after the thief and her gang. This stunt-chase scene has been talked about a lot in the media as part of the promotional “sound-bytes” that moviemakers give out. The sequence is definitely a novelty in a Tamil movie and is heavily inspired by the Free Running Sequence in Casino Royale. Unfortunately the similarity starts and ends with two points - (1) The “chasee” is African and (2) The chase is in Africa. The average Tamil moviegoer is definitely going to think that this stunt is the best that he has seen in his life, but in case such a person stumbles upon this post, I hope he visits the link given above and understands that the stunt in this movie is barely 15% of that one.

Anyways, coming back to the movie, Suriya and Jagan return to Chennai where Suriya is immediately tipped off by Prabhu that he is going to be checked by a Customs officer. He manages to evade getting caught and brings the diamonds to Prabhu, and delivers the diamonds to a jeweler. Btw, I forgot to mention the villain. He is a saettu boy who is trying to run Prabhu out of business, since Prabhu pushed his father out of business. He is one perpetually Angry Son Saettu and I will refer to him as ASS (pun intended). I don't know the name of the guy, who plays this role, but his voice is definitely very familiar sounding and I am kinda narrowing it down to the voice of the character Adhi in Kolangal serial.

In case you are wondering why I have not mentioned Tammu yet, that's because she hasn’t made her appearance yet in the movie. After Suriya and Jagan are done with their courier work, Jagan takes Suriya to his home and introduces him to his family which includes his sister Tammu. Sparks start to fly between Suriya and Tammu and it is well fanned by Jagan! Anyways, even as these 2 are romancing, Suriya continues with his work. At one point Suriya finds out that Jagan actually works for the ASS and has been sent to Prabhu's group to work as a spy. Suriya and Jagan then fall apart.

This is where the movie breaks for the interval. On resumption, it is clear that ASS is sending out cocaine to Malaysia using "kuruvi"s. Jagan also volunteers to go on this "mission" and in the flight he runs into Suriya again. Though Jagan offers the olive branch, Suriya refuses to take it. But when the flight lands in Malaysia, Jagan realizes that one of the capsules he had swallowed is broken and a high dosage of cocaine has entered his system. Suriya manages to sneak him out of the Customs officials and the ASS' men try to take over Jagan without worrying about his state. Suriya intervenes and takes him to a Doctor he knows there. But that Doctor refuses to treat him since Malaysian laws are very strict on drug smugglers. Even as Suriya is struggling with the situation, ASS' men come to the scene and take off with Jagan who is practically dying from OD.

Suriya goes behind them in his car and there is another of the supposedly good stunts in the movie, the car chase. There are great car chases in most Hollywood movies and the one sure thing is that the Police join the action at some point or the other. Here, nothing of that sort happens and the villains and Suriya happily knock off people, street restaurants, almost ram into people, get smothered in the highway and even get their cars to jump off kerbs into a cross-road/highway some 20-30 feet below. Even as I was muttering expletives under my breath, the chase came to an end with a big crash. At the crash site, they showed a van gone turtle and the registration number read "WFT" and some numbers. That text was pretty close to one of the expletives I had muttered under my breath - "WTF"!

Anyways, after the chase, the villains inform the ASS that Jagan would not reach their place alive and so ASS orders that Jagan's stomach be cut open and the contents taken out. Even as the villains are doing it, Suriya hears the cry for help and rushes to the spot. The mandatory fight takes place and the baddies are beaten away. But unfortunately, Jagan is not in a state to recover and as his last wish, he requests Suriya to burn him off. And our hero does that promptly. And like I mentioned earlier, the Police are yet to make an appearance!

After he returns, ASS tries to pass off the blame on Jagan's death onto Suriya and convinces Tammu and family with some evidence. Luckily she gets hold of her brother's phone where the dude in his dying state manages to capture his entire death sequence on his mobile camera and so Suriya is saved!!!!!!

Even as Prabhu tries to send off Suriya to a safe place abroad for some time, ASS tries to implicate Suriya while at the same time, trying to smuggle out a huge volume of drugs. With a very co-operative Customs officer, Suriya is able to go free since he helps him seize the huge load of cocaine. The two then decide to join hands and bust ASS' operations of smuggling cocaine, idols and what not. They seem to be quite successful in their efforts. The tension between ASS and Suriya keeps escalating and at one point, ASS tries to kill off Suriya's mother. Prabhu then steps in and decides that he is going to leave the business so that ASS can be the undisputed leader of the show. But Suriya would have none of it and as they are coming back after the meeting, they realize that ASS has tampered with their vehicle. Prabhu dies in the ensuing accident, but manages to save Suriya.

ASS is now off to Congo to collect the diamonds and our man Suriya goes after him. He manages to clean up the car, a handful of rebels and also manages to finish off the ASS. The interesting inconsistency here is that during their first trip, Jagan remarks that all these guys are trotting around with guns like people carry sticks to scratch one’s back. But when the rebels are actually getting ASS back to his hotel with the big packet of diamonds, they are all unarmed!

When he returns to India with the diamonds, the same customs officer calls him to his office. Suriya realizes that this time, it was his mother who was the informant because she doesn’t mind her son going to jail for a couple of years, just so that he can reform. And the officer actually gives Suriya an option using his "Department's Special Powers" to give him a plum Government job. And the movie ends there.

So, as you can infer, this is simply yet another pot-boiler with the key difference being the cinematography and perhaps the casting. Also, for a movie filled with illegal activities, there is no glorification or justification for the hero taking up the bad side.

Suriya seems to have enjoyed his role and his performance was good. However, at some stages of the movie he looked lean and in some others quite normal. These were not simply in the songs sequences or the times when he was smuggling stuff. The publicity material may insist that the costume designer came up with different “looks” for Suriya. But I think the director shot the movie even as Suriya's last movie Vaaranam Aayiram was being shot and hence the inconsistency in the body tone.

There is really nothing new to say about Tammu. I am not going to describe her like I did in my review of Padikadhavan. For more details you can either read that post or simply visit this link. She has amazing screen presence and while she doesn’t have much of a role, she did exhibit some restrained acting in the couple of scenes where she had to act.

Coming back to some of the issues with the movie, I found it odd that for a middle-man, who was dealing with business running in crores of rupees, Prabhu had only 3 helping hands. And one of those, Karunas, had a really insignificant role. For someone who has even had a lead role in a movie recently, this was a very small part in the movie. At some level, maybe the director could have swapped the roles played by Jagan and Karunas.

Having written so much, I actually feel that I shouldn’t attempt a movie review anymore. I am not really reviewing the movie but only narrating what I saw. But I still decided to post this only because I didn’t want all my typing effort to be wasted!