Spider - review

This week-end movie watch was the latest toast of tinsletown – SPYder. Considering that it was a bi-lingual and for a fact that the telugu superstar has dubbed on his own in tamil, it still felt like a telugu movie with him on screen. But for him, the rest of the cast didn’t exhibit that vibe. Somehow it was still not connecting with Maheshbabu. May it’s the baggage of his super hits in telugu or because of so many dubbed versions of his telugu movies in tamil. Somehow, it still feels alien to watch him, despite his best efforts. May be the fact that, at the pretext of underplaying, he was plastic in emoting, didn’t help either. Somehow movie actresses and doctor roles don’t quite tally, at least in recent past. Almost all the loosu characters are shown as MBBS students or even practicing doctors, when their characterization wouldn’t even merit them to be tutorial passed.
After a really long time, tamil cinema gets a crackpot, psychotic and ruthless villain. The last one I could recollect was Mansur ali khan in Captain Prabakaran which was ages ago. Right from the intro scene with a mask on his face, SJ Surya is a riot. His flashback episode on the reason for his psychotic character is quite unique, with probably the converse case of Pithamagan as the only close rival. The madness that he unleashes with his acts makes the magnitude of impact and raises the level of his villainy. Even without showing the violence he wrecks, just by the dialogues of those who mourn the victims, the director raises the bar of villainy and his characters soars to the sky in monstrosity. Considering the first ever time, he comes to face the hero, that encounter between the two was a terrible let down. And the climax screws it up further.
Indian cinema, especially telugu and tamil, have long had their own set of super heroes in the form or Rajini, MGR,NTR,Maheshbabu,PawanKalyan, Ajith, Vijay and the list is endless. Anyone who does “action” hero roles in tamil or telugu has only comic heroes as peers/rivals in Hollywood. They can fly, beat 100’s of people with bare hands, escape speeding bullets, stop trains and what not. It’s for this reason that, making superhero movies in regional languages is such an oxymoronic adventure as their matinee idols themselves mimic all the superpowers. But there is a gap for villains to perform and that’s the very reason they are always very noticeable in our movies. This particular character had such a great opportunity to be developed on par with the dark knight’s Joker. With the villain knowing about the hero and not the other way round, I expected fireworks when they first meet, which literally did happen and turned it into a damp squib. The climax was not befitting for the hype with which the villain got introduced and got reduced to yet another fight sequence which was dismal to say the least, saved only by an even worse ending scene where the hero gives lectures on humanity.
There were two standout sequences – one involving how the hero saves his mom and brother with the villain lurking inside his house and how he makes use of housewives to save the victims under the control of the villain. The irony couldn’t be more hard hitting with pizza delivery guy, water can guy, vegetable vendor reaching his house prior to ambulance and finally the police. And as for housewives climbing over terraces and saving the family, it was far fetching though original. The chilling scene being, how casually the villain walks past a dead body hanging from the ceiling on the very house. And by the way, that was a spoiler and this is the alert sentence J

Gils verdict – nice entertainer. Could’ve been great.