Saroja - Outright Theft of Judgment Night
Make no mistake - Saroja is not a great movie or a must watch movie by any stretch of imagination (pl click here to read Saroja - Outright Theft of Judgment Night).
But, this is a big but, Saroja is a lot better than the usual garbage that Kollywood shovels out unfailingly every Friday. You know, total garbage like Satyam, Kuselan, Kuruvi or Bheema.
What lifts Saroja above the usual Tamil kuppa (garbage) is some attention to the screenplay, a fairly fast-paced narrative and a director (Venkat Prabhu) who seems to have some basic idea of how to make a movie, all rarities in the Tamil film industry.
However, what makes Saroja a less-than-interesting movie is the poor acting skills demonstrated by the key performers, below average music, some really crude dance/song scenes and a pedestrian story that sputters ever so often.
With the exception of Premji Amaren, all the other key performers in Saroja including Siva, Vaibhav, S.P.B.Charan and even Prakash Raj and Jayaram are plain unendurable.
How unpolished actors like Siva, Vaibhav and S.P.B.Charan managed to make the leap in front of the camera is one of life’s inexplicable mysteries.
We are fans of Prakash Raj but in Saroja this Kannada actor, who has made a name for himself as a character actor in Tamil movies, is utterly unwatchable and a caricature of his usual self.
Four friends Ganesh (Premji), Ajay (Siva) and two brothers Jagapathi Babu (S.P.B Charan) and Ram Babu (Vaibhav) are on their way to watch a India-Pakistan cricket match when a truck accident on the highway forces them to take a detour on the back roads.
No sooner is their van on the desolate back roads, than they run into some bad elements led by a character called Sampath (Sampath) who has kidnapped a young school girl Saroja, daughter of a rich businessman Vishwanath (Prakash Raj), and holding her for a hefty ransom.
How the four friends manage to escape from the ruffians constitutes the rest of the movie, which is mostly filmed in the low-light conditions of the night.
Fortunately, the comic scenes in Saroja are not as bad as those featuring Vadivelu or Vivek these days.
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Saroja - Outright Theft of Judgment Night
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Yuvan Shankar Raja must have been dozing for the most part because the music in Saroja is so hopelessly below average. Some portions of cheeky cheeky in Saroja reminded us of where do you go my lovely (No Mercy).
The Kodana Kodi song/dance sequence featuring Nikita and the criminals was one of the crudest and ugliest song/dance sequence we’ve seen in recent years, even by Tamil movie standards or lack of it. Sheer torture and depressingly disgusting.
And since when did they start singing Hindi songs (Aaja Meri Soniye) in engagement ceremonies in Tamil Nadu. We’ve seen such song/dance sequences in a gazillion Bollywood (Hindi) movies. At least in Bollywood movies, they do such song/dance sequences with some finesse unlike in this movie.
Still, its many failings notwithstanding, Saroja is one of the tolerable Tamil films to emerge out of the Kollywood Cooum in recent months.
N.B.: There were all of seven people for the 3:45PM show of Saroja on Friday at the crappy Movie City theatre in Edison, New Jersey. Worse, there were hardly any folks waiting for the 7:00PM show when we got out around 6:30PM. The print quality of Saroja was lousy or was it the poor projection system at the horrible Movie City theatre (managed by Reliance ADAG of Anil Ambani).
Thanks for the review.. was hoping it would be better than that. How does it compare with Johnny Gaddaar? I think JG set a standard for indian thrillers.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
JG was a far superior movie in every respect.
I knew that it would give a lot of relief to you and the audience who were cheated and tortured with some really bad films done by these top-heroes!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Surprisingly, there was hardly anyone at the theatre for the first show of Saroja. Maybe, they didn’t market the movie well.
//Surprisingly, there was hardly anyone at the theatre for the first show of Saroja. Maybe, they didn’t market the movie well.//
See,I bet it’ll pick up by 3rd day all over,as the word-of-mouth is quite good,like it happened for Mozhi,Subramaniyapuram.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Mozhi was a nice movie.
yesterday I happen to watch Pammal.K.Sambandham.
Its a typical Kamal style of cool Movie.
Probably you can watch it, as you look agonised about Kollywood.
Also give a try on Panchathanthiram (Nagesh and Kamal rock in many scenes)
I will try Saroja after an year may be (dont have guts).
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We’ll try to watch Panchathanthiram. It’s available on Netflix but Pammal.K.Sambandham is not.
Panchathanthiram was crap.. was a bad remake of a bad movie called Very Bad Things
Gandhiji is a well informed guy, it seems.
I think Kamal is a kind of a vulture. He steals ideas fom Hollywood movies.
These are some of my observations and informations collected mainly from SearchIndia and other sources:
Nayagan - Kamal tries to imitate Marlon Brando in Godfather (SearchIndia)
Panchathanthiram - A remake of a movie “Very Bad Things” (gandhiji- SearchIndia)
Guna - Kamal tries to imitate/portray the performance of “The Hunchback of Notredame” character.
Sura Samharam - A scene plagiarised from “Lethal Weapon2″ where a drug addicted girl throws herself from a balcony of a highrise building.
Punnagai Mannan - Kamal’s emotional expression in the aftermath of the jump (Suicide) is very much similar to an imitation of the scene from “First Blood - Rambo” where silverster Stallone is fallen from the helicopter and get entangled in a tree top surrounded by hills bruised and still hanging and making a loud cry.
Thenali - A much similar to a movie called “What about Bob” (SearchIndia)
and the list goes on… Maybe, someone else could contribute more information on plagiarism in Kamal’s movies if they’d been observing carefully.
One more clarification I would like make honestly is that I’m an ardent Kamal FAN (Not the mechanical “fan” that obeys the functions of it SANS ANY PROTEST). I liked all those movies above said.
But, I enjoyed them in a sense of enjoyment that we get out of typical indian “MOVIE” style. Not with the sense of cinematic experience that we get from the Hollywood movies. It’s so vast a difference. Like north pole and south pole. Two different distances. But the name is same, a common name to describe “CINEMA”.
Both the cinema (Hollywood and Indian movies) is made with one goal - satisfying the cinema goer (to make money, obviously).
The only difference between these two are - one is made purely for financial benefit (Indian) and the other (Hollywood) is also made for financial benefit but at the same time safeguarding the ART of movie making and the progress of its quality with every new movie it makes and taking it to heights of the cinematic zeal.
The passion of movie making and presenting them with original ideas which is always evolving and keeping in mind of a mature audience that it’s going to be presented to, is the hallmark of a sound and rich movie industry.
This phenomena is thus missing in other big film industries (Indian, especially) whose only interest is not to evolve and produce good movies but unfortunately have got caught in a spider web to create the same ideas repeatedly over and over again, tirelessly with no escape from its closed mindset.
Either they are not ready to change or the so called FANS are not allowing them to present anything new.
Without a critical review boldly projected in the mainstream media you can kiss goodbye to any good expectation of them being transformed into the kinds Hollywood film makers (of good movies).
These industries either make no effort to make a change or is simply comfortable to give any crap in the name of cinema as they’ve been doing this for the last 6 - 7 decades long, just to collect the nickels.
So,”The Nickelodeon” is probably the best fitting name to such an industry, a notion which I suppose would be accepted by the “Real cinema lovers” who are yearning for enjoying good cinema.
Maybe, my ideas are crazy but my cinema taste is not. I also do check my cinema thinking (critically) always with quality reviews being openly published for the benefit of the cinema.
Always, check the oil in the engine!!!
SearchIndia.com Responds:
At first glance, it seems like the Indian movie industry is approaching a tipping point. As the costs of movie-making goes into the stratosphere (primarily because of too many producers chasing too few stars), the pressure to show a decent return on investment should have a positive impact, in theory.
But since at the same time there’s also big money (via the corporate houses like Reliance ADAG, Warner Bros et al) moving into Indian movies without commensurate improvement in the underlying infrastructure (like good story & screenplay writers, decent actors, good music directors and competent directors), we believe there will be more crap and bigger disasters like Kuselan, Kuruvi, Love Story 2050 and Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic.
Shuaib, i posted this link before in some other thread.. posting it again..
http://jackofall.blogspot.com/2005/03/inspired-kamal-hassan.html
Hey, thanks gandhiji.
I’ve got smacked by the info you provided me with. My heavens! so much of things have happened in the name of Tamil Cinema???
What I learnt from going thru almost all of the comments and the article itself is that, Kamal being inspired by other movie makers. For what?
To recreate and hide in notion of “Inspiration” and do plagiarisms? He cannot hide from the mere fact that the audience (some of them) are very intelligent and well informed.
If the Indian movie makers started to focus on presenting their hard work to the intelligent audience only then surely they will bring out many ORIGINAL ideas into their cinema.
If they concentrate only on FANS, then you will end up creating more craps. Because, fans want to see some moving pictures with their idol in it. That’s all they want. They have no time to think seriously or to check what they’re eating is edible or not (the cinema). Their systems are made to grind any solid thing from rocks to shit. So, they’re not bothered.
The other important thing that crossed my mind is that: Are these informations reaching the cinema makers?
If so, why are they still adamantly repeating the same things and trends?
And why are they congratulating among themselves with each other in their film circle of these skewed achievements?
Something wrong somewhere.
We as Tamil Movie fans would like the industry to achieve higher levels in cinema reaching the summit of recognition - The Oscars.
Funny thing is, that they have gone and copied “OSCAR” too (”Oscar” Ravi Kumar Productions). Fearing the infringement of intellectual property laws, now it has been re-named as “AASCAR”. Because, they’re newer productions are targetting the global market (Dasavataram).
AASCAR or Ass+Scar!!! Yes, the latter one, because I’ve got my backy burnt watching Dasavataram for 3 hours, sitting like in an electric-chair torture.
Whenever I pass by the cinema theatre I watched Dasavataram it reminds me of GITMO torture chambers…!
This movie is heavily borrowed from Stephen Hopkin’s Judgement Night !! . Of course it’s changed a bit here and there with generous doses of our kollywood masala
.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
It sure does. Thanks for the tip.
Please click here.
the name ‘Saroja’ itself kept for the movie for a scummy sense.. this name is not only part of ’saroja saaman nikalo’ but also famous fourth grade tamil porn writer’s nick.. and the same sense reflects in the song ‘Kodana Kodi’.. do we have anything called Censor board ?… disgusting…
In Mudhalvan, Arjun asks to vacate a Marvadi from a house which is not allotted for him by the Government.
Initially the Marvadi resists then gets scared and flees, While then he says “Sushma Pura Samaan nikalo” (Sushma, pack up).
Venkat Prabhu misheard it as “Saroja Samaan nikalo” and used it in his first movie, to portray “throwing someone out of a gang”.
and it continues.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Funny.
First of all as cinema audience, we have a responsibity in our hands.
That is to foresee whether Tamil cinema wants to move in the direction of Hollywood or in path of realistic movies.
First of all I want an honest reply whether a film should have a good message or just entertainment. A film should have a suitable amount of realism,then only comes the story and screenplay.Today we all come to cinema to get entertained. Agreed.But this attitude of the audience will only kindle interest among filmmakers to make masala movies without any logic. If we want Tamil cinema to be like a hero winning against all odds, then we like it. It would look cliched, but if the presentation is good,we like that. Even Hollywood show that too, but with greater special effects. All Hollywood action movies are fake,they have no realism. We only like them for the special effects and screenplay.
1.For example,Kamalhasan’s film Virumaandi though reflecting realism and bordering on a rural theme had a average run in Tamilnadu.
Plus points:good screenplay,story,perfomances,realism.
Minus points:hero not fighting(shown vulnerable in certain scenes),more importance given to villain character.
Reason for poor run:not “commercially” entertaining.Boring.
2.But the film Dasavatharam which is entertaining but has no story or a logical screenplay is a superhit in Tamilnadu.Watching the film you will see hollywood special effects but no story.You should keep your mind “alert” to understand the story.
The problem is not in blaming the cinema maker but we as an audience.We do not want/like good films of the first kind but only of the second kind. The maker who makes films having real emotions,gripping storyline,we reject those films and label him as a fool. We like only movies of the second kind, so all the movies made whether Sathyam etc will be of the same kind only.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. You write above: First of all I want an honest reply
You bloody schmuck - what the f*&^ do you mean by I want an honest reply?
Do you think we’re just sitting here with the sole goal of spewing dishonest thoughts to all visitors. Learn to write sensibly, you moron.
2. You write: That is to foresee whether Tamil cinema wants to move in the direction of Hollywood or in path of realistic movies.
Implicit in the above statement is a disdainful attitude toward Hollywood on the faulty premise that Hollywood makes bad movies while realistic movies (whatever they mean in your understanding or, more likely, lack of understanding of the phrase) are admirable.
For the most part, there’s no such thing as a realistic movie.
When you step into a movie hall, you forge a tacit pact with the director - in exchange for suspending disbelief at the improbable or “unrealistic” scenarios in the movie, the director promises to entertain you. Most Tamil and Hindi movie directors fail to deliver on that promise.
On a spectrum, a so-called realistic movie has less improbable scenarios like cars flying or one man fighting 10 villains as they do in Tamil movies to this day. But in any case, who’s to say what’s realistic and what’s not. Does anyone know the full range of human experience?
3. Because of the misfiring synapses in what passes for your brain, you think ‘good message” and “entertainment” are mutually exclusive. As if they can’t co-exist.
That said, we’re not as hung up as you are on this “message” business. If there’s a message, it’s fine. If there’s no moral message in a movie, that’s fine too.
In our view of the Indian movie business, some of the elements that count are - Is it art? Is it entertaining? Does it break new ground in some way? Is the story gripping? Is the music pleasing to the ears?
4. You write: A film should have a suitable amount of realism,then only comes the story
We thought realism was a sub-set of the story…shows how little we know.
5. Virumaandi was a fine movie. Pasupathy was very effective.
It seems that you guys want good entertaining movies and if there are movies that are having good message and presented in a realistic way you like it. But the point is that in Hindi film industry, films like Bheja Fry,Khoshla ka Ghosla or the recently released film “a Wednesday” which are films which are realistically made are accepted by the audience. This means that there is a space for such kinds of films to thrive and flourish. But in Tamil films that is not the case. Even if one wants to make a serious film , it should have a song or a fight. The above mentioned Hindi films did not have song sequences or dance but audience loved it. But in Tamil film industry,even if a big star or a new director wants a realistic film based on social issues without any song or dance routine producers or distributors do not accept it. The producer fears that the public will not accept it.
There was a time in Tamil film industry(during the 90s and 00s) when films like Kutty (in 2001) and Valli (in 1994) were made.
Kutty the film revolved around child labour and won critical acclaim.It won many awards.
2002 Cairo International Children’s Film Festival (Egypt)
* Won - Special International Jury Prize - Kutty - J.K. Vishwanathan
2002 National Film Awards (India)
* Won - Silver Lotus Award - Best Child Artist - P. Shwetha
* Won - Silver Lotus Award - Special Jury Award - Director - J.K. Vishwanathan
Valli dealt with a women who was raped and how the incident affected her mind.In that film,Rajnikanth appeared in a deglamourised role.The film moved the audience to tears.
But what is the state of tamil film industry now? Recently, Alagaphan, a new director who made a film named Vanathupochi, cried at the film’s audio relese function that he made the film with his own money and no producer was willing to back him. The film deals with the mental trauma of a child when both parents are working. So what Iam hoping to see is that there should be a sea change in tamil film industry, in a manner that films like Vannuthupoochi are accepted by the audience. Then there will be a space created for such movies to thrive and flourish. gradually it will sound the death knell for masala and illogical movies.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We would have loved to see A Wednesday, one of the movies in your list…but it does not seem to have been released on the East Coast of the U.S.
Maybe the Tamil audience (largely) still loves to see all those nonsensical fight scenes…that could be one reason why directors incorporate ridiculous scenes where you have puny characters like Dhanush or Bharath doing weird acrobatics on screen.
Another reason could be blind imitation, one idiot is doing it…so, let’s also do it.
Bollywood (Hindi movies) is moving ahead of the Tamil movies these days…the Hindi movies overall are far slicker and less crappy compared to Tamil movies.
Tamil movies will never do away with illogical fight sequences. This is one of those film industries that produces stunt actors with rubber bodies.
No matter how much the Hero smashes these guys single handedly, they seem to bounce back fighting. When I watch Tamil movies in DVD players these scenes never reach my eyes. Because, I fast forward them.
I wish the cinema theatres to have a kind of option to fast forward garbages/scenes by the viewers while watching the movie!
An advertisement nowadays in the Sun TV shows a new movie with a title song “Naathu Mukkang” (or whatever it is)with the same blend of “mosquito killing elephants” Heroism. God! when will they stop these nonsense - “Dewaney..ennai paarungal en paawangal thammai waangi kollungal…Lord answer my prayer” Lip sync/ed by Sivaji Ganeshan
(Lord, bless me, take my sins and pardon me)
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: I wish the cinema theatres to have a kind of option to fast forward garbages/scenes by the viewers while watching the movie!
Now, wouldn’t that be nice.
What amazes me is that the Tamil Film industry guys never make a change to their thinking.
The same love theme they cooked many times over decades and still being attempted with new cooks. Even the new entrants to the industry follows the same old thing.
Isn’t there anything called “Creativity”? Yes, there is but that is too applied to the love theme. That’s why there are so many (1000) ways to “Correct” a girl (Meaning to fall in love).
Creativity - Yes, it comes with many flavours Hindi,Tamil, Malayalam, Thelungu…etc. Same theme with different flavours.
Love - Main purpose in life
Love - Main function in the colleges
Love - Sacrifices are made to tie the knot
Love - Power makes a mosquito a Superman, one shot 10 fellas down.
I’m goin’ nuts now. Watch a good hollywood movie and forget about all this shit.
oru director muneradhu some ppl stomach burning :X……lotz of diff btwn saroja nd judgement night…..they hv changd story mixing commercial elementz..even gajini copied frm memento hollywood muvi…nd even in hollywood muvi same copying thing happening ex: korean horror muvi remade again….nothing wrong in copying……copying is also diff talent..itz highly much difficult to make muvi lyk saroja…………….we can notice the hardwork they have done in saroja muvi…plz stop posting craps nd wrong nd [trash talk] reviewz..even i watch judgement night…lotz of differences in cinematography….nd guyz be proud tat venkat prabhu has taken tamil cinema into new heightz………………stop ur crap reviewz..worst review i have never seen in my life……..dont go nd sleep in theaterz watch full muvi ok….
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Above comment has been posted in wrong thread. It should have been posted in Saroja - Outright Theft of Judgment Night.
1. You write above: oru director muneradhu some ppl stomach burning
If you belong to the vertebrate species, if you have any cojones at all, we dare you to refute all the similarities we pointed out in our post - Saroja - Outright Theft of Judgment Night - between Judgment Night and Saroja.
Saroja is nothing but a shameless instance of theft by Venkat Prabhu.
Venkat Prabhu should beg forgiveness from the audience for stealing a Hollywood movie (Judgment Night, 1993) and fobbing it off as an original. In fact, he must refund the ticket money. And maybe, Venkat Prabhu should even go to Tirupati and get a mottai (shave his head off) for his sin of stealing, contact the producers of Judgment Night (JVC Entertainment and Largo Entertainment) and pay them a royalty and insert a notice that Saroja is inspired from Judgment Night.
2. You write above: nothing wrong in copying……copying is also diff talent..itz highly much difficult to make muvi lyk saroja
Nothing wrong in copying….copying is also different talent? Mundame, shaniyane is that how you passed all your exams.
If you feel copying is a legitimate technique of making movies, then ask Venkat Prabhu to confess that Saroja is a remake of Judgment Night.
Let that thief Venkat Prabhu not pretend that Saroja is original because it is not.
3. You write above: even i watch judgement night…lotz of differences in cinematography
Yeah, sure. Camera could be different, the years were different, 1993 for Judgment Night and 2008 for Saroja, the locations were different and the camera operators were surely different. Judgment Night had a camera operator called Krishna Rao (seriously, no kidding)…Saroja probably had a Rama Rao or Gopal Rao as camera operator.
You seem to belong to the homo idiot species (not referring to gays here, you dummkopf) that believes in the credo: Hurray, I have a keyboard, so I must type a nonsensical comment.
4. You write above: ….nd guyz be proud tat venkat prabhu has taken tamil cinema into new heightz
No, No, and No.
This scumbag Venkat Prabhu has actually taken Tamil cinema to a new low by shamelessly stealing a Hollywood movie and covering it up with blatant lies.
Gandhiji, thanks for the link that points out Kamal’s “inspired” projects. His fans now have a few (how about 20-30) bitter pills to swallow :).
I remember watching “Sathya”, before I ever watched “Arjun”, and I attributed the grittiness to Kamal’s “originality” in creating a a very tight, politically-charged action flick, rife with twists and deceit. Kamal even dedicated the movie to the then recently deceased MGR, in a rather ignominious (at least, in my eyes) fashion as ‘Yenn Kadhai’ (my story). It’s amazing to note how much Kamal ripped off almost every scene from “Arjun” and made it into his own ‘kadhai’, including that extremely brutal (but beautifully shot) chase-and-kill scene amidst a sea of black umbrellas. Shameless indeed, especially when you factor in his ‘Yenn Kadhai.’
Thanks to this age of information, such theft does not go unnoticed :).
guys,
here is the part 2 of the Inspired kamal hassan blog.. this has got video clips
http://jackofall.blogspot.com/2008/09/inspired-2.html
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Your links to video clips are not working. This is the error message we got: We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.
ya, links not working.. searched for ‘raaja paarvai climax’.. with different number of As in raja and paarvai .. no luck.. but ended up with “Anthi Mazhai” and “Azhage Azhagu” .. WOW! amazing songs.
The links are working now….
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Watched Raja Paarvai (1981) & Graduate (1967) videos. Proves copying by the Tamil film-maker.
Tested in IE & Firefox…works on both browsers.