En Vazhi Thani Vazhi

For some films, the bar is set lower and you get a genuine sense of gratification when it manages to cross it. En Vazhi Thani Vazhi is that kind of film but by the time it ends, all that we feel is murderous rage — for it not only manages to sink below the bar but digs a pit, and keeps going deeper and deeper into the ground. The film is about a trigger-happy cop, Vetriselvan who shoots criminals, takes on his higher-ups, shoots more criminals, takes on powerful, corrupt politicians, and shoots more criminals. In the beginning of the film, we are told that he has been part of over 20 encounters, and by the end, that count must have easily gone beyond 200. He has no remorse about killing a human being and is basically a rock (it helps that he is played by RK). In one scene, a kidnapper dangles a kid from the fifth floor of an under-construction building and drops him. What does Vetriselvan do? He starts shooting at the criminals, we get a shootout and that's it. Did the kid survive? If not, how does Vetriselvan feel about it? We don't get any answers; instead, the film breaks into a song! The romantic track is even better. The heroine, Vetriselvan's moraponnu, has, pasted his face on top of all our movie stars in the posters that adorn her room and romances him by singing that she's a moon not touched by Armstrong and is a mix of Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe and wait... Sherlyn Chopra! Surely, she can't be that desperate! Wikipedia says that the film is apparently a remake of the Bollywood film Ab Tak Chhappan but we doubt if Shimit Amin or anyone associated with that film is likely to go to the court claiming copyright. They will all be only eager to assure us that this is an entirely different film, if only to protect the legacy of their film. Excruciating is the word that defines this film as it is the psychological equivalent of having your nails pulled out of your finger one by one. Somewhere Vijayakanth must be laughing at us for making jokes on him when we are being tortured in such fashion.