Sura is a benchmark film for Vijay, as he celebrates his golden jubilee in the only soil he can shine in. The story has been told before (umpteen amount of times) - a tale of a fisherman, a do-gooder to his fisherman community, head decision maker of the community, who is crossed by a powerful politician to lose all and then regain more.
This dimwitted film is passé for even hardcore fans. On the onset of the shoot there was so much of media glare that set the expectation meter scaling way up and Sura was surely a sought after and anticipated film of the season. Sun Pictures(market leader) decided to back the project and distribute it, and this added to the hype further.
Kollywood is an industry where cinema and film stars are considered nothing less than gods themselves; there are formulae to become a successful star.
MGR was the first superstar. Then it was Rajinikanth, and now ruling the roost is Vijay on the lines of commercial success. These hugely successful stars had a fixed formula repeated in their films. Each film was bigger that the previous and is watched even today with equal interest.
MGR moved with the masses, he always donned the role of a commoner and fought for their rights. Hence the masses could easily connect with him.
Rajinikanth the “peddler of hope” - his blockbusters always had a formula of rising from a subdued poor man to a rich leader or from a rich man, then ripped off to become poor again and then garner momentum and become a rich leader again.
Vijay's films have always chosen the middle path of MGR and Rajnikanth. He is always a commoner who becomes rich to save his friends. Our population has a significant number in the lower or middle strata, and if they can relate to the character then you have won the race.
Sura is a hardcore Vijay film with his typical mannerisms, script, dapan kooth music (repeated in all his movies, else they flop! Ssurprising).
There are lapses in every department, starting from the production, direction, music, choreography, stunts and even comedy. Vijay's team should guess how long they would get away with this kind of fooling the audience.
Rumour has it that once director Gautham Menon had approached Vijay for a film, however this was never done because Vijay had asked him to script a movie around the storyline of his previous films. When you have all Vijay movies turning out in a particular way, you would want to consider the above more than just a rumour.
The direction of SA Rajkumar is clueless and is directionless.
The story revolves around a fishermen village. Although special effects have been used to create the village sets, the core set of the village seems so fake. The shots are also inconsistent.
The editing looks haphazard; certain scenes are so poorly edited that even a layman could tell.
The dances are again repeats of Vijay’s previous films even the famous "hand on bottom" rip-off from Pokiri the leg sequence from ATM. The elastic and acrobat dance caught a fancy in Pradhu Deva's times but looks like it should be rested - it’s an overdose.
The fight sequences are very foolishly concocted. There is a scene where Vijay outsmarts the villain and is off in his newly bought Audi, with his lady love Thamanna on a highway, where the goons chase him. Then there is a fight sequence, with the use of a lot of chalk powder (each powerful fist shows the chalk powder like dust) and strings (looks like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and obviously the hero wins.
What caught my fancy were the earthmovers trying to move earth in thin air probably trying to spunk up the scene. They looked like unwanted item girls in a song.
Towards the end, the story was going so clueless that they introduce a robot-shaped bomb and some Chinese bomb makers. It looked like Kannal Kannan obviously sent an inexperienced assistant to get his stunts organised.
Vadivel just fails as "Umbrella" , he get so tiresome to watch that the film could do with out him.
The music of the movie is just not even close to hummable. The songs seemed to be forced into the film.
There are so many unanswered questions like the kindling of the element of love between the lead pair. Why does Vijay buy an Audi Q4 with the loot from the villain, when he could have used the money for his life long dream of building houses for his village? How come the villain did not think about trapping Vijay through the Income Tax angle, for the source of the money used for building the houses for his fellow fishermen, and for Vijay’s costly ride? Rather he uses a frivolous 'Ganja' to frame the larger-than-life Vijay.
The first half is tiresome but tolerable however the second half is a fan's sacrifice to his cult hero. The film could be recommended to only very, very hardcore fanatic fans of Vijay. Otherwise don’t even bother to get misled by the posters.
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