Vaa Vaathiyar ends up a bland yet fascinating iteration of a masala film funnelled through the prism of a quirky humorist, notes Arjun Menon.
The MGR factor in Vaa Vaathiyaar
The name MGR reverberates across the history of Tamil cinema like a reminder of a past time, where cinema, social justice and morality bled into each other. The image of M G Ramachandran, matinee idol-turned-politician, and his idea of heroism is still among a few things that everyone, on all sides of the political spectrum, can agree upon as a simpler time, where evil was mitigated by an immortal heroic figure.
Nalan Kumarasamy uses this historical and cultural context of Tamil Nadu and its people as a jumping-off point for his take on the vigilante masala subgenre. Nalan imagines a world where, almost 40 years after his death, what if the heroic, paternal spirit of M G Ramachandran came back to see the state of things as they are today?
What would he do? How would the morally upright hero of countless morality tales couched in individual heroism feel about a corrupt cop who sides with the bad guys being the hero of the story?
What Vaa Vaathiyaar is all about
On paper, Vaa Vaathiyaar has all the makings of a swashbuckling entertainer that inverts the stale tropes of masala cinema through some clever conceptual devices. But Vaa Vaathiyar takes an interesting logline of a corrupt cop Ramu (Karthi) having the time of his life as a morally compromised, money-hungry cop whose dedicates his life to selfless heroism by MGR's effervescent spirit.
The central dilemma in Ramu's life is his loving grandfather Bhoomipichai (Rajkiran), a devoted MGR fan, who sees his grandson as a reincarnation of the dead superstar and God's gift to the masses.
Ramu also has an incident relating to a lottery ticket win from his childhood, which assured him that sometimes it's best to be Nambiar (the legendary villain from the heydays of Tamil cinema) than being the uptight yet penniless hero obsessed with social reform, played on most occasions by MGR.
In a generation where onscreen heroism is limited to sensationalised bloodshed and mind-numbing gore, it's a relief to see the soft, humble hero figure of a simpler time make his way back to the big screens.
There is no dialoguebaazi, arrogance or abrasive line deliveries at work here. Just a good old-fashioned whipping session and ride around the city at night for the hero riding on horseback, saving people on the streets who call for help with period-appropriate soundtrack blasting in the background.
Does Nalan Kumarasamy deliver in Vaa Vaathiyaar?
Nalan quickly runs out of ideas to make the initial intrigue last, and his writing is very superficial to land the desired outcomes. Coming up with catchy one-liners is one thing, but following them up with the same conviction is another. He gets to the point quickly and does not beat around the bush when it comes to the storytelling.
There is a different version of Vaa Vaathiyar that might have been a tiresome, clumsy iteration of a beguiling central idea in lesser hands. But Nalan Kumarasamy, with just two films under his belt, Soodhu Kaavum and Kadhalum Kadandhu Pogum, has already established himself as one of the most interesting comedic voices in Tamil cinema. There is a flavour and texture to his previous comedies that thrived on being pitch black and emanating from the weird eccentricity of his loser protagonists.
Vaa Vaathiyaar is a lesser work in his filmography as it trades in populist beats for wider palatability and ends up being a tad less sharp than his previous work.
A scam involving the government and a rogue group of hackers/activists called Yellow Face, who are out to reform corruption by exposing a scam involving the chief minister and a businessman, Periyasaami (Sathyaraj), is the secondary story we are following in Vaa Vaathiyar. That narrative playing out against the resurrection of the old school, moralistic hero figure as the alter ego of the corrupted cop is a very creative conceit for a vigilante film. But Nalan is too unfocused to make the imaginative ideas come to their full potential.
Ramu developing an alter ego is treated as a very convenient, rushed phenomenon, where the lines between lazy writing and lack of imagination blur. You don't get the hero's conflict of being pulled in two directions by the flip sides of morality. It's all in service of flashy action scenes with Karthi hopping on a horse and riding all over the city for people seeking help from the new favourite social media sensation, Vaathiyar.
The prospect of seeing a dated style of heroism face off with the cutthroat, merciless evils of the current world is explored only as an incidental detail in Vaa Vaathiyaar.
Karthi carries the 'happy-go-lucky vibes' of the opportunistic cop on the lookout for the next bribe or leftover crumbs from business deals, tactfully inserting himself into sticky situations at the right place and time.
Vaa Vaathiyar's poor second half
The second half proves to be the undoing of Vaa Vaathiyar, as the film nosedives into being a run-of-the-mill actioner. Nalan overuses songs, and the film abruptly cuts to song and dance numbers in between as if stopping the momentum.
Understandably, the impulse is to recreate the structure of an older kind of 'commercial cinema' that thrived on excess to drive the entertainment factor. But the songs stand out oddly as Nalan inadvertently backtracks the efficient and no-fuzz writing with the distractions of the dance numbers that add little to anything by way of mood or texture to the film.
Karthi is strong as the hero caught between alternating egos and makes the superficial details stick, despite the hurried writing that leaves no place for introspection of any kind.
Popular MGR songs like Raajavin Paarvai and Naan Ungal Veettu Pillai are thrown in from time to time in remixed versions, and the film tries to tie in the nostalgic aspect, but the wayward writing in the latter half makes the random scenes stick out as mere exercises in style.
Krithi Shetty is wasted as the mystic but ultimately clueless YouTuber Wu, who ends up being a side character in Ramu's tryst with the alter ego situation. The only 'shoe leather' in Vaa Vaathiyar's screenplay comes in the form of the awkward interactions between Wu and Ramu, who seem like diametrically opposite people.
The film forcefully inserts the love angle, since ah, you guessed it right, it's inevitable. Our mainstream films just don't know what to do with their leading women, do they?
There are involuntary callbacks to films like Anniyan, where the device of an alter ego was used to correct a flaw in the hero to become a more actionable, socially conscious vigilante. But here it's all played out for laughs, and Nalan breaks any logical explanations as to how some things happen the way they do to the hero.
The jump between 'Vaathiyar' and 'Ramu' seems underdeveloped, as the film makes you want to think it's a spirit as well as an alter ego residing within the hero that is bouncing between the two personalities. The back-to-back fight scenes end up becoming punctuation to keep the spectacle going, even though after a point, the action becomes cumbersome and repetitive.
There are interesting conceits lost in translation as Nalan juggles between the tones of a regular action vehicle and an idiosyncratic homage to a time and kind of filmmaking that thrived in its earnestness.
Anybody could do the second half of Vaa Vaathiyar in its present state, but it's painful to see a filmmaker of Nalan's calibre squander away all the build-up momentum and infinite potential of the one line for momentary genre pleasures.
Vaa Vaathiyar ends up being a bland yet fascinating iteration of a masala film funnelled through the prism of a quirky humorist.
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