Raavanan's perspective?? Huh?

In his old age Mani Ratnam decides to have a go at ole’ Valmiki’s tale, finds Anil Ambani to sink some loose change into its production and ropes in big names to act. Vikram plays his favourite role – perhaps the only role that he knows – that of a demented masculine brute leftover from prehistoric times, and Aishwarya, plays the role of the beautiful damsel in distress and establishes convincingly that incredibly beautiful damsels can be incredibly dumb too. And lo, Raavanan is born.

But before the movie is deservedly consigned to wilderness, a couple of million suckers in India will readily have shelled out a couple of hundred rupees each to watch it in elite movie halls, (not to mention ruin their health with tubs of buttery popcorn and all that) and swell Anil Ambani’s bank balance.

While most of Ramayan’s main characters are recognizable in Raavanan, not one has been convincingly etched or completely developed. The story could have been better exploited to study how characters are shaped by circumstances and experiences. But neither are the characters drawn out nor is the plot clearly worked out.

Till the intermission nobody knows why the things that are happening are happening and after intermission, one begins to wish they just would cease happening. Lots of loose ends are never tied up and at the end of the show, one is left wondering what the team was trying to say or show.


Till the end we are never told why Veera, the demented brute with the golden heart (the heart is more a surmise, even that isn’t clearly established) is in the bad books of the police, and what made him the bad guy that he is said to be. Veera’s act of kidnapping the DSP (protagonist)’s wife seems to be mere personal vendetta – taking revenge for the rape and death of his sister in the hands of the police who gatecrash into and make a mess of her wedding though only goodness and Maniratnam know why. The DSP in chasing Veera and using state machinery to recover his wife also seems to have acted more out of selfish interest than general interest.

And though the final twist in the end is good, we never really know how to respond to it, because nowhere in the movie have the characters been established convincingly. And through it all, poor Aishwarya tries to look brave and smart and good and virtuous and sympathetic and helpless and a lot of other things besides but the last scene clearly establishes her as the stereotypical dumb damsel. The policemen, convoy, sniffer dogs and all – as always – come across as being slow, stupid and senseless.

I am tempted to borrow Veera's eloquent vocabulary to describe the movie: much buk-buk about nothing.