Movie review of Mankatha – Ngo…

*************Spoiler Alert*****************

Watched the movie Mankatha with Raghu and his wife, on Saturday evening at Sathyam. Coming as it did barely 24 hours after watching Deiva Thirumagal, I was really hoping to see something good. To know if I did, read on.

This movie is Ajith’s (or should I say Thala’s) 50^th movie and is directed by Venkat Prabhu. Considering the latter’s penchant to break the formula and make urban movies, the former’s status as a crowd-puller and the DMK-family producing and distributing the movie, there was the obvious buzz around it.

The movie opens with the shot of a really open space – almost desert like – with one guy kneeling on the ground and a bunch of Police officers discussing about killing him. They even have some thugs to help them finish off the task in order to escape official scrutiny. The goons are given the go-ahead to shoot and they take aim at the guy, who incidentally is around 20 feet away. Let me now request you to read the first few words of this paragraph again. Please; do it.

So, when the goons are about to take aim, there comes a
Pajero (or was it a Bolero) flying into that space between the goon and the victim. Basically, none of the people in the situation could spot the arrival of an SUV, DESPITE the total emptiness of space around them for almost a square kilometre. That scene, pretty much sums up one thing – however much of a “different” film-maker you may be, there are few things that are mandatory in Tamil movies (probably Indian movies).

There is then the mandatory fight where we get to see Ajith as a Policeman (Inspector or something I presume), save the guy who was about to be shot and even shoot down one of the Policemen. One thing I learnt from that opening fight sequence was that I am almost like Ajith! Yes, I am already into the salt & pepper hair, I just need to get some liposuction done to reduce one pant size, of course a nose job and voila – I am Ajith. If you still don’t get what I am trying to say, Ajith is fat.

Anyways, the movie then moves on to establish him as a suspended cop, living in quite a posh flat in Mumbai, who despite having a girlfriend (Trisha in a blink-and-you-miss role) sleeps with a random woman (Lakshmi Rai in a blink-and-she-still-fills-out-the-entire-screen role) and as someone who smokes and drinks incessantly. If I think about it, the only time he isn’t drinking, is when he has a cigarette in his mouth!

We then get to see Ajith establish a good rapport with his girlfriend’s father, who too is pretty much a shady character. This shady character has a loyal …istant and also has the local SI on his payroll. The local SI in turn is friends with a bar-owner and the bar-owner brings in his IIT topper friend to Mumbai promising him a job. The job is to rob the shady character, of just 500 Crores in cash – the funds being given to this shady character for safekeeping by the bookies of Mumbai. The bookies are betting on the IPL and one more point is that the cash is in USD.

So, these four guys go around plotting the whole theft, but Ajith somehow sniffs out the plan and asks to be included in the share, providing his bit of expertise as well. Meanwhile, we are also shown Arjun as a Special Branch Officer investigating into the whole IPL betting ring. So, Arjun’s team are on the trail of the cash coming into the shady character’s custody and the gang of five is also trying to swindle it.

Now, you would expect this swindling to be done in a very appreciable manner. But what you see instead is akin to the performance of the Indian test team in England last month – a huge let down. The whole episode of stealing the money truck was nothing short of juvenile. I can go on for 2 pages in detailing out all the flaws in the scheme, but I prefer that you watch it and find them yourself. Believe me, you will find them easily.

Anyways, the money is now stashed in a safe place with a technological lock ensuring that none of the five can double-cross the other. We are then shown a laboured scene where Ajith thinks out loud about how he plans to remove the other 4 from the equation and take all the money himself. But surprisingly, when he visits the safe place with the SI and the loyal …istant, he finds out that the bar-owner and the techie have actually run away with the money.

Some more laborious stunts later, we find that Arjun now has the loyal …istant in his hold and is trying to get Ajith into the correct side of the law. After another protracted scene later, the loyal …istant is show down by one of Arjun’s men. We are then shown the bar-owner and the techie having the time of their life in what can be safely assumed to be Goa and guess what, it turns out that the random woman who slept with Ajith is actually the brains behind the bar-owner and the techie doing this double-cross. Now the bar-owner plots to finish off the techie, but the random woman does one more double-cross and kills off the bar-owner and runs away with the techie. And the money of course.

Meanwhile, Ajith and the SI have somehow found out that these folks are in Goa and so both of them drive towards Goa. For some very strange, inexplicable, mysterious and illogical reason, the random woman and the techie are headed towards Mumbai! Ajith spots them driving on the opposite side of the highway, does a quick U-turn and chases them. The chase then ends in a motel where the random woman tries to lure Ajith into believing that she stole the money for him!!! He kills her, the SI runs behind the techie and lo behold, Arjun enters the motel with his team. I forgot to add that Trisha’s father’s goons are also in the fray.

Then everyone starts shooting at everyone else and somewhere in the middle, the techie is shot dead. Then Ajith and Arjun square off with guns, fists, legs and finally, Arjun shoots down Ajith. Then there is a major explosion in the kitchen and the remaining good guys walk off. After some background voice over that explains about the death of Ajith and that the Police are on the trail of the SI, we are taken to Bangkok where one of the guys from Arjun’s team is following a suspect who he thinks is the SI.

The suspect steps out of the car and amidst maniacal whistles from the audience, Ajith steps out of the car. The cop then corners him and calls up Arjun, who then asks for the phone to be handed over to Ajith. Ajith takes up the phone and then starts laughing. We are then shown Arjun also laughing. Then we see some B&W scenes where it is established that Ajith and Arjun are actually friends from the Police Academy and this entire heist was originally their plan. Also, they have managed to take the money safely during the explosion.

So, there you have it – the entire movie laid out to you, almost scene-by-scene. This is definitely a new type of movie in Tamil, though it is not a new idea or concept. The movie is clearly inspired by many heist movies made in Hollywood and probably even a little from remakes in Bollywood. While the overall plot and the final twist are good, there are a lot of wrinkles that need to be ironed out like:

• length of the movie
• characters/definitions – I actually didn’t see the purpose of a techie in the whole heist. His real contribution was in hacking the traffic signal system (which could have easily been done by deploying some fake traffic constables) and creating the secure lock system (again could have been achieved by simply using off the shelf-products). Trisha is a big star and didn’t really have any role. Andrea could have been better utilized, probably in place of Lakshmi Rai, who by the way has become too fat and like most Indian women is unable to pull an off-shoulder gown.
• Horrible stunts – I have never seen so many bullets being fired and so few hitting the mark
• Songs – were bad and really slowed down the movie.
• Way too much drinking and smoking
• The fourth wall was broken too often – both in visuals and in dialogues, thereby establishing that this is the movie of the stars and not of the Director
• Most of what I have detailed in this post are basically things that have not been done well

There were good things too.

• Different storyline
• Plot twist – though you start getting some inclination about the twist, it is kind of decently hidden
• Not trying to make Robin Hoods out of either Ajith or Arjun
• Premji was quite impressive with his comic interludes

So, did I like the movie? I find it difficult to say yes, because in movies with this kind of plot, what really makes you like it is the “how” and in that aspect the movie is a let-down. But any day, I would rather watch this than Deiva Thirumagal.

P.S.: In a couple of places in this post (including the title), I have done some censor of the words. However, it would be evident to the reader as to what I was not saying. This is an indirect tribute to how the swear words have been tuned out in the movie, though the lip synch clearly shows you what was being said.