Superstar Rajnikanth and director Shankar have both come up short in the new Tamil movie Sivaji The Boss.
A flawed movie in many respects, Sivaji fails to scale the lofty heights that one expects when the two top-guns in the Tamil film industry come together.
We loved Shankar’s last film Anniyan and enjoyed Rajnikanth’s 2005 movie Chandramukhi.
Both Anniyan and Chandramukhi had strong, unusual stories and passionate performances that captured the audience’s interest.
So it was with heightened anticipation that we headed for the Premiere show ($25.00 per ticket) of Sivaji at CinePlaza in North Bergen, New Jersey on Thursday, June 14, 2007.
To our great disappointment, Sivaji is not half as good as Anniyan or Chandramukhi. Gosh, Sivaji is not even as entertaining as Pokiri, a remake of a Telugu film featuring Vijay.
Where Sivaji falls short the most compared to Anniyan or Chandramukhi is in its banal story that focuses on the twin evils of corruption and black money. Both subjects are hardly unusual themes in Indian movies and have been so beaten to death thoroughly over the past 25 years in both Tamil and Hindi films that it’s hard to see new angles emerging here.
Sivaji poster outside CinePlaza, New Jersey
Director Shankar’s play-it-safe decision to hang the movie on the slender threads of corruption and black money means the Sivaji story can never go beyond the commonplace.
As if that were not bad enough, the Sivaji story is more than a wee bit disjointed. Altruism, revenge, homilies on eradicating the pernicious influence of Black Money and corruption, helping the poor and romancing the heroine follow each other in haphazard fashion.
The Sivaji story is pretty simplistic.
Sivaji (Rajnikanth) returns from the U.S., a rich man with plans to