VISITOR COLUMN

Maverick director Shankar is back after his ambitious project Enthiran. This time he brings you a movie which needed 3 years in the making and a collaboration of marvelous technical team along with brilliant lead actors.

The story starts with a normal guy Lingesan who dreams of becoming Mr. India but fate takes him to a different level where he achieves what others in that field couldn’t. This creates him few enemies and the consequences cost him something more valuable than his life. The remaining part of the story is about how he straighten things with  his enemies with their own medicine and gets back together with his lady love.

Shankar wants to convey a story with a combination of love and revenge instead of his usual vigilant type stuffs and he almost succeeded in his new presentation. Shankar has come out of his comfort zone  and tried to narrate a non-linear storyline for the first time. He uses Advertisements to differentiate the flow of the screenplay. So every time an Ad gets played, the story moves forwards and backwards to indicate the happened and happening.

From the performance side, it was one killer show from Vikram who has given everything from body to soul. Be it a bodybuilder or a hunchback, he just transforms himself flawlessly. The transformation scenes of Vikram from a macho model to something else was terrifying to the core and that was the true Mersal moments you have to watch out for. Amy Jackson equally competes with her sizzling beauty and alluring expressions. The Lip sync of Amy was little disturbing in the initial moments but she correct herself strongly and portrayed Diya in an immaculate manner also her dubbing artist should be appreciated too.

Usually  Shankar develops the character of an antagonist in a significant style, but here we have five villains fighting for the bread and they grabbed their shares as much as they can. Santhanam added most of the commercial values but that Power Star portion should have been cropped.

The Technical team of I was the most stunning and unimaginable combination no one could dreamed of. PC Sreeram’s Cinematography was delightful and the art team has splashed every single color in almost all the frames. Rahman once again comes up with charming songs and thunderous BGM in action sequences. Anal Arasu has to be appreciated for all his amazingly choreographed stunts especially the first fight and the train sequence. Weta’s Make up needs a special mention coz most of the time you will be witnessing the disfigured faces and bodies but still there is no need to  feel grisly.

There is no problem with the screenplay, every scene moves within the story and most of them were racy. The only problem is the dialogue which is not emotional or deep and failed to connect with the viewers sometimes. Shankar carefully crafted the love sequences, they are short, crispy and he knows where to stop them. These love sequences are well backed up by eye popping locations and mind blowing songs.

I is not disappointing or faulty, it is good and watchable but it could have done even better also

Verdict – New Shankar, New Bottle and  New level of  Kicks.