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Rajini 2.0 : The modern, IT savvy, hip and cool updated version of Rajini.

Sivaji the Boss, or Bachelor of Social Service was in the making for a long time, and its arrival was hugely talked about all over the world among the Indians. It was released about three weeks back. This movie created a few records – costliest Indian movie ever (60++ millions rupees), Rajini’s 100th Tamil movie, first movie combining Shankar, AR Rahman, and Rajini, and many more.

I was at One Utama, in a half full Cineplex. And it was the most quiet Tamil movie crowd I have ever heard. We were all fascinated and enthralled by various aspects of the movie – fairer Rajini, Shreya, the settings etc.

Ok, let’s dive straight into the storyline first: The movie is about an NRI (Non Resident Indian) named Sivaji (Rajini) who is returning from US after making a fortune as a software engineer. He plans to settle down in India and use his wealth to help improve the lives of the poor. His plans are thwarted by baddies led by Adishesan (Suman – who acted as Rajini’s brother, the police inspector, in 1980s’ Thee). He ends up broke. Challenged by Adishesan’s words, he rises like a phoenix and vanquishes Adisheshan and his corrupt cronies. He does that by stealing their “black money” (laundered money), and turning it into legal money channeled back into his Sivaji Foundation with help from his foreign contacts. Amidst this confrontation, our hero finds time to court and get married to Tamilselvi (Shreya). In the end, Sivaji ends up in jail due to charges of money laundering. The bad guys plan to kill him, but he outwits them all and wins in the end.

Ok, that was the short version. Let’s look at the detailed one:

The story starts with a prisoner being escorted to jail. His neighboring cellmate asks him why he is being imprisoned, and the prisoner replies that he was trying to help the people. With that punch dialogue, we are introduced to Rajini as Sivaji in prison. I have to admit, the intro lacked the spark compared to usual Rajini intro. However, it was a fairer and younger looking Rajini that greeted the audience, compared to Rajini in Chandramukhi. It seems no effort was spared to make Rajini’s youthful appearance look real, from wig stylist to cloths designers. Sivaji the prisoner starts the flashback….

We see Sivaji’s parents (Manivannan and Vadivukarasi) together with uncle (Vivek) waiting for him at the airport. Vivek introduces a slew of modern dressed beauties to be married to Sivaji, but Sivaji wants a traditional Tamil girl to be his wife. Story moves to a function at night and we get to see the first song by SPB – Actress Nayanthara (looking much slimmer) made a guest appearance for this song, clad in traditional village attire. The song was well taken at a location in Pune – lots of color and movement. SPB sang it well too, reminiscent of Kelladi Kanmani song. Unfortunately, Rajini’s standard dance steps were no match for the impish and fast Nayanthara.

We then get to listen to Sivaji’s grand plans to improve the people’s life. He wants to build a college to provide free education and a hospital to provide free treatment. He is then introduced to Adishesan, who is a powerful businessman running colleges and hospitals in Tamil Nadu, and happens to be political kingmaker as well. He agrees to help Sivaji to achieve his dreams, albeit with his own interests protected.

In the mean time, his uncle Vivek suggests that they go around all the temples to identify a suitable wife for Sivaji and on one such trip, they meet Tamilselvi. Somehow, Vivek manages to get her details. From here, the main storyline is interspersed with comedy tracks focusing on Sivaji trying to make friends with Tamilselvi and her family. Among one of the plans cooked up by Vivek, Rajini and Vivek gets caught by police on their first visit to Tamilselvi’s house as suspected burglars. When his parents came to police station to bail him, Rajini admits his love for her. The scene where his parents proceed to make engagement arrangement at the police station itself was hilarious. Tamilselvi is touched by Sivaji’s love for her, after looking at the things her had bought for her. She is in two minds about liking him. The song Vaa Ji… Vaa Ji… follows. Finally, after a visit to Tamilselvi’s house on Deepavali, and dancing to Sivakasi’ Deepavali song (which made Ilaya Dhalapathy Vijay very happy), Tamilselvi’s parents took a liking to Sivaji’s family.

Even as Tamilselvi’s parents decide to accept Sivaji’s proposal (thanks to Salomon Papayah, who acts as Tamilselvi’s neighbor), they find that the astrological mismatch between Sivaji and Tamilselvi will cause mush loss to Sivaji, and may even cause his death. Unable to risk her lover, Tamilselvi cites skin color as the reason of rejecting Sivaji’s proposal. Believing her, Sivaji tries many methods to become fairer. Sivaji antics to become white in order to be comparable to Tamilselvi were funny. He tries everything from Fair and Lovely to spacesuit to protect against radiation and sunlight, but fails. Finally, Sivaji manages to win her heart by convincing her not to belief astrology too much; his punch dialogue – “if I don’t live with you, I’ll die from broken heart, so what if I die after getting married to you? In the end, everyone will die” – manages to knock some sense into her. The culmination of Sivaji’s effort is the engagement between him and Tamilchelvi.

Sivaji meets Adishesan to finalise his plan and was shocked to see that Adishesan has other plans for his project. Adishesan is worried that Sivaji’s free services will bring huge financial losses to him, thus wants Sivaji to venture into property development or hotel industry. Sivaji disagrees and decides to go ahead. He tries to do according to law, by is hampered by paperwork and corruption. In the end, he resorts to bribery in order to facilitate the construction of his project. As completion nears, he faces more and more hurdles, until Sivaji is forced to mortgage his house, land, and other assets. Due to Adishesan’s manipulation, a stop work order is slapped on Sivaji’s project. He decides to fight in court and had to part with his car to pay the legal fees. In the end, it was a futile attempt as the court decided that Sivaji bribed government officers and his project has to be abandoned.

He faces humiliation from Adishesan who advises him to beg for a living and gives him 1 rupee to start off his new career. That is the turning point in Sivaji’s life. Broke and without a home to stay, he sends his parents back to their village. He visits Tamilselvi’s family and tells them to postpone the wedding. Tamilselvi does not want to proceed with the wedding since she believes what the astrologer said is coming true. Just by getting engaged, Sivaji had become a pauper, and she dreads to think what will happen if they tie the knot. Sivaji leaves dejected. With a flip of a coin he lets fate decides whether to continue in a nice guy way or to fight back like a lion. No prizes for guessing what the outcome was. With that, we come to the second part of the movie.

The second part is vintage Rajini. It was action all the way, fast and furious. Sivaji cheats Adishesan into revealing his black money documents and blackmails him for half of the loot. He does that with other cronies and manages to get a hefty sum. He then gets the money converted into US currency, and flies of to US. Over there, he gets his friends to distribute the US dollars among their friend and send it back as donation to his Foundation. Thus the money he got illegally is channeled back as legal money in the guise of donations to his fund. Armed with cash, he finishes his buildings and proceeds to build colleges and hospitals in every district in Tamil Nadu. In between, he gets married to Tamilselvi and we got to catch the song Thee Thee Thee (my favorite). He also provides evidence of money laundering by Adishesan and his cronies, which causes them to be jailed.

Tamilselvi is always haunted by the astrologer’s words and while on a trip to temple, she is accosted by CBI officers who warn her that her husband’s life is in danger unless he admits his crime and goes to be prison. She manages to get Sivaji to tell her how he got back his money. This is followed by some terribly execute car chase scene at open air cinema. The trauma from that car chase causes Tamilselvi to fear for her husband’s life. She steals his notebook and turns it over to the authorities. They come and arrest him.

While in custody, the authorities realize that his laptop is protect by voice recognition software. They need the data in the laptop to convict Sivaji. Adishesan hears about this and orders Sivaji to be interrogated to activate the laptop and to be killed later by assasination. Sivaji finds out about this due to a MMS clip sent by an indebted policeman. Sivaji hatches a plan and informs his medical college head (Raguvaran) to be on standby. While be interrogated, he gets beaten by Adishesan pretends to faint While the doctor is being summoned, Sivaji gets himself electrocuted. The doctor arrives and pronounces him dead. The policemen panic and decide to proceed with the assassination plan. Raguvaran and Vivek manage to hijack Sivaji’s body just before the assassination takes place, and Raguvaran revives him using fibrillators. The bad guys are happy that their plan succeeded, while Sivaji makes his getaway and plots their downfall.

To the bad guys’ disma,y news comes out that Sivaji Foundation will continue running and Sivaji’s friend from US is coming down to take over the operations. The friend, who calls himself MG Ravichandran, is none other than Sivaji in disguise. He really looked cool with his bald head. Yes! Rajini went natural towards the end, and I think that is the best part of the movie. His mannerism and coin flicking action convinces Adishesan that Sivaji is Ravichandran. Ravichandran shows his passport, green card and other credentials as proof when the police inquire about his identity.

The ending scene is at Adishesan’s college’s rooftop. Sivaji/Ravichandran sends the MMS clip showing Adishesan ordering Sivaji’s murder and demands for money. At the rooftop, they fight and fight and fight and fight (yawn) for about 10 minutes, and finally, Adishesan falls to his death. Everyone lives happily ever after.

As I mentioned earlier, the first half was slow and felt disjointed. The comedy and courting scenes seem to come at the wrong time and seem to be a cut and paste job. It would have been better to just focus on the corruption theme and minimize the comedy and romance tracks.

Acting wise, the movie will run due to Rajinikanth. His gimmick this time is chewing gum throwing and coin flicking. Not as great as the previous ones. Hi traditional “how is it” has been updated to “cool” to reflect modern times. Dancing was as usual. His acting in the first half of the movie was a bit sluggish. He and Vivek did well in the comedy scenes. The second half was better with action-oriented Sivaji taking over. However, I find it hard to imagine Rajini in such a modern role. Being used to see Rajini as working class or villager roles in a 70s or 80s way, it was difficult to stomach him in modern outfits. The team did well to mask his age, but it did not seem right. Maybe the thought that it’s actually a 55 year old guy kept crossing my mind. Again, no effort was spared to make Rajini stand out with his clothes, hair style, and mannerism.

Suman was so so only, I think wearing sunglasses makes him look less villainous. The eyes were hidden, thus you can’t really sense the evil in him.

As for Shreya, even a mechanical doll would have been enough. She just had to move around in bikini tops and skimpy dresses for the songs sequence, and change to saree for the dialogue scenes. No doubt she is a beauty with great figure and scintillating hip movement, which were exploited unashamedly by the director, just like in Mazhai, Thiruvilayadal Arambam, etc. All her dance steps looked similar – swaying hips, movement of hands, and focus on certain part of her body. Her background in Kathak made her dance steps look great and tantalizing. Beyond that, she got to shed a few tears and mouth some words. However, the stars are shining on her since her upcoming movies are with Vijay and Vikram respectively.

Vivek had some great scenes, and at times, he overshone Rajini. Other supporting characters had nothing much to do – Raguvaran, Manivannan, Vadivukarasi, Livingston, etc. can be replaced by just about any other actor and we won’t notice a thing.

The highlight of the movie is definitely the songs and Rajini’s appearances in various guises and fashion (and maybe some will say Shreya or Vivek as well). Shankar spent a lot of money for the setup. The glass house and water pool songs were well taken. I enjoyed the wedding night song – Thee Thee Thee, it brought back memories of Antonio Banderas in Once Upon A Time in Mexico. The song “Oru Kudai Sunlight” had Rajini appear very fair, and he did look handsome. The effort taken to make Rajini look fairer involved shooting techniques using filters, and post production editing up to a year it seems. It was not only make-up, but technology as well.

Songs are by AR Rahman. The first song was typical village themed one, while the rest were modern tunes. Rajini’s movies should have a traditional dance song along the lines of Adi Rakamma in Dhalapathy. It’s missing here even though the SPB song was a traditional song. The modern beat doesn’t seem to gel well with Rajini. The song “Oru Kudai Sunlight” was kind of a slow rock song. Sahana Pookal was a sentimental song, but I was busy watching the scene rather than listening to the music.

Dialogue was interesting because a lot of reference were made to previous Rajini movies. Some scenes took ideas/acts from movies like Dhalapathy (“mother, why am I dark?” ask Rajini at the police station) and Chandramukhi (interviewing Shreya at her house). When Adishesan suggested jobs for a broke Sivaji, he mentioned carrying goods (Mannan), auto driver (Baasha) among others.

Conclusion – can watch again for songs, Shreya and bald Rajini. The theme of one man army against corruption is nothing new, so don’t expect too much. Personally, I liked Thalapathi better.

Cast: Rajinikanth, Suman, Vivek, Shreya, Manivannan, Vadivukarasi, Pyramid Natarajan, Livingston, Raguvaran, Solomon Papayah, and many more.

Genre: Action, Drama, Comedy

Acting : 6/10
Story : 6/10
Special Effects: 7/10
Cinematography: 8/10
Overall Oomphness: 7/10

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