The expectations about 7 aum Arivu were sky-high since it comes from Suriya- AR Murugadoss- Harris stable, who gave us that memorable Ghajini. But sadly they have failed to recreate the old magic, due to a weak plot and a rickety screenplay.
If you are looking for a racy, straight forward action entertainer from the trio, 7 aum Arivu
is a let-down as you have to suspend disbelief, logic and common
sense. Terms such as DNA transplant, hypnotism, bio-war are bandied
about making it confusing.
The film opens in 6th century with a documentary on the great Tamil
Pallava prince Bodhidharman who goes to China and becomes a sort of
saint and messiah for his teachings and his vast knowledge of martial
arts, hypnotism and medicine. But he dies and is cremated there.
Now 1600 years later, Aravind (Suriya) a happy-go-lucky circus artist
falls hook-line-sinker for Shuba Srinivasan (Shruti Haasan) a genetic
engineering student and scientist who is doing research on
Bodhidharman. But soon Aravind realises that he was just a guinea-pig of
Shuba who wants to bring back Bodhidharman by inducing his DNA into
Aravind.
Now on a parallel line there is Dong Lee ( Johnny Tri Nguyen) who is
sent by Chinese government to India to implement ‘Operation Red’ a
mission to bring about a bio-war. His target is to spread a virus in
India and eliminate Shuba whose mission is to bring back Bhodhidharman.
Will Shuba achieve her goal and how?
A film like this should keep you completely hooked till the end but
sadly it does not provide you a single sequence which will make you sit
up and take notice. Take scenes like the one in which Shuba submits her
thesis to a team of renowned scientists and starts talking about Tamil
language when she herself is talking in broken Tamil. The hypnotism
angle of Dong Lee becomes tedious after a point. The romantic track
between Aravind and Shuba looks so forced, and songs jumps at you out of
nowhere.
The first half of the movie except for the Bodhidharman episode moves at
snail pace. Too many songs without any storyboard or relevance are
thrust in to the narration at regular intervals in the 160 minutes long
film. There is no twist in the tale, towards the climax it becomes too
preachy and the plot line is as predictable as rains during Diwali in
Chennai.
The star of this film - no questions asked - is the abundantly gifted
Suriya who invests such sincerity in both the contrast characters of
Bodhidharman and Aravind, that you can't take your eyes off him. But a
weak script lets him down and why are film-makers exploiting his
six-pack in all films?
Shruthi Haasan looks a million bucks and is very impressive in her first
appearance in Tamil cinema. We appreciate that she was bold enough to
dub in her own voice but why did she sound as if she was struggling to
speak Tamil? Johnny Tri Nguyen as the deadly villain is fantastic and
sends a chill down your spine. The climax fight between Suriya and
Johnny is terrific and is superbly choreographed by Peter Hayne.
The music of Harris Jayaraj is bit of a dampener, other than the slightly hummable Mun Andhi..,
the rest of songs are pedestrian and you get the feel, you have heard
it somewhere. After all, the effort of Murugadoss to make a special kind
of film is laudable but seems to lack the imagination required to pull
off what he set out to achieve. |
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