Pattudala, the dubbed version of Vidaamuyarchi (Tamil), is currently playing in theatres. In this section, we are going to review the latest box office release.
Plot:
The entire story takes place in Azerbaijan and mostly involves people of Indian origin. Arjun (Ajith Kumar) is a businessman who faces a personal crisis when his homemaker-wife Kayal (Trisha Krishnan) decides to divorce him. Their incompatibility issues are exploited by a fellow Telugu couple named Dheeraj aka Rakshith (Arjun Sarja) and Deepika (Regina Cassandra). How do the evil couple seek to trouble Kalyal and Arjun? What is their end game? What are their motives? How does Arjun discover that something sinister is underfoot? Does he have the wherewithal to counter their nefarious designs?
Post-Mortem:
An oft-repeated charge against Tamil cinema is that it is all about 'oppression, suppression, depression' themes coming at the audience in an unending stream. There is another, less spoken of imperfection associated with Kollywood. It's that of big-hero movies lacking in narrational ambition.
No amount of Baahubalis and Pushpas and RRRs is going to convince Kollywood about the need to get ambitious. Thalapathy Vijay's Beast was probably written with a medium-range actor like Sivakarthikeyan in mind. Films like Darbar and Annatthe were so generic that you wonder what made a superstar like Rajinikanth go for them in his 60s. Quite a few Ajith-starrers suffer from the same deficiency - they look apt for medium-range stars. Pattudala, the film under review, is strange even by Kollywood standards. It is so unambitious that you can sense inertia everywhere, especially if you are someone who wants to experience an adrenaline rush while watching superstar movies. If Kollywood had Trivikrams, Sukumars and Rajamoulis, Pattudala would have ended up with someone like Vishal or Suriya.
The screenplay of Pattudala is so basic that we could be watching a low-end RGV movie. Some scenes in the first half are ostensibly designed to deliver pointless thrills and confusion, the kind of writing we associate with the RGV of the 2010s. The flashback is not only amateurish and simplistic but also unrefined; the writing is at the level of a crime thriller. Think of movies like Ratsasan (remade in Telugu as Rakshasudu, fronted by Bellamkonda Sai Sreenivas).
The characterizations are barely fleshed out, designed as they are for bland conversations and dull reactions. Probably, this has to do with some foreign movie influences. By the way, the film is an adaption of Breakdown, the 1997 American crime thriller film directed and co-written by Jonathan Mostow.
The hero is vulnerable, but instead of evoking thrills and deepening the drama, his helplessness comes across as an alibi for delaying the finale. Just too many accidents spring up, pushing the run-time forward. Ajith's character either finds help accidentally or is lied to bizarrely by others. Everyone in the town is either an aggressor or plain pathological.
Many elements/ideas in Pattudala are passed off as an 'Azerbaijan lo inthe, Azerbaijan lo inthe' (a la 'Bombai lo inthe'). Anirudh Ravichander's background score makes the film feel like a low-stakes action thriller. The idea was to make it feel like a moody actioner, though. The cinematography is flawless.
Closing Remarks:
Pattudala is a lifeless adaptation of an American movie. You can do without it.
