Devadhai

"Don't miss the first 30-45 minutes of the movie. Excellent special effects, editing and direction makes this movie worth watching"
"Illayaraja once again proves that he is a master in re-recording"

Having read a lot of good comments like the above, I sat down with a lot of expectations, to watch this movie. Luckily, we had the pleasure of watching it in an exceptionally good quality print, that we cannot blame the tape for any problems, if there were any... Still, I guess I would have enjoyed it much better, had I had the chance to watch it in the big screen.

Having taken a bad hit at the box-office, with his previous film Avadhaaram, it takes tremendous guts to take this kind of a movie, within two years of the first flop. Couple of minutes into the movie, I realised that this one will not be one of the usual tamil movies. The movie did start off with a lot of grandeur as expected, but all this grandeur became stale very soon as the number of directorial flaws started to increase by the minute. Movies of this nature have to be error free, to sustain the audience interest to the end. Nasser has partially failed in this regard... The scene (in the past) where the small girl speaks in pure tamizh and her dad talks in colloquial tamizh, is very silly... There were a  bunch of scenes like this in the first half an hour... Still, Nasser deserves full marks for trying something totally new to the tamil cinema. Sometimes, Nasser does remind me of  the Late. Veenai S. Balachander, who had a penchant for making off-beat movies.

(still from Devadhai - Cinema Express)

The movie is about a soldier who falls in love with a princess... Due to his magical powers he stays alive for many years and tries to marry the princess in her future birth... The soldier's die-hard assistant helps him in every step. Nasser acts as the soldier, who is feared by everyone on earth. His die-hard assistant is played by "Thalaivaasal" Vijay. Even though I know that Vijay is a fine actor, in my opinion the main drawback for this movie, is him. His tamil pronunciation is not upto the mark. Keerthi Reddy plays the princess and without doubt she is the best newcomer among the many who have turned up in tamil movies in recent times. Vineet tags along as the boyfriend of Keerthi Reddy in the current birth.

The special effects seem a little archaic... and the art-direction leaves a lot to be desired... Cinematography was not bad... Illayaraaja's background score is good in patches... The background score during the final titles, was exceptionally good. But, the score during the initial scenes could have been better. But, overall I feel Raja has done his job well. Couple of songs sound OK, but definitely not the ones I would expect from a genius of his calibre.

Even with all these problems, there were a lot of scenes that captures one's attention. The scene were the princess shuns Nasser [and Nasser plucks his heart out in response], I felt that Nasser gave an exceptionally good performance... There were shades of the beast from Beauty and the Beast. Also the scene were Nasser rides off in a horse to meet the princess, a bunch of his soldiers who are dancing on the road just stop for a breather when Nasser comes near and resume their dancing once he passes them... Very subtle... And deftly handled by Nasser.

You will enjoy this movie if you like off-beat movies. But definitely, this movie is for the big screen, and not for the small alternate... Might not be a good movie for kids though, since they might not understand most of it...

Krish