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cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Darbar (2020)

So you all know what an FRS is right? Right? 

Editor’s note: why do you guys keep saying this? I don’t like it, Chumma kizhi this line; add something like Happy New Year buddies or some such thing. 

+5: Movie has no narration, this simply means that it will try and use the simple visual medium and not over indulgent voice overs to simply tell a story. Kudos. 

+2: Movie begins with suspense type character killing rowdy boys here and there, face not shown. Immediate suspense buildup. 

-2: Next moment itself, newspaper tells that this is actually done by Mumbai police commissioner Aaditya Arunasalam. So much for immediate buildup which is immediately spoiled, newspaper headlines also are quite lol worthy. 

+5: Mumbai Police have a lot of Tamil speakers on the force, this is considerably more than the number of tamil speaking doctors in Srinagar (wink! Wink! Nudge! Nudge! We made a Kaatru Veliyiday reference) 

+6.7: ARM’s Durbar is truly a bilingual in a different sense, as in people are speaking in one language and dubbing is happening in another and of course there is no sync, which is intentional we believe. 

-50: Small time crook releases video asking hero to ‘encounter’ him within a day. Bad move nanba. 

-21: Not enough pistol training for all the rowdy boys in the movie because there are at least 100 of them and when they fire at Rajni, not even one bullet even causes a flesh wound. #RowdyBoysNeedSkillDevelopment

+5.34: Rajni is introduced by showing the impression his boots make on the ceiling of the building he is raiding, much like in a monster movie. Just saying. 

Editor’s note: don’t proceed with this imagery, our offices might get hit. Chumma Kizhi. 

-11: Rajni literalises an idiom by really bringing a knife to a gunfight, of course wins 

-34: Ok ok, now we know that our hero is indeed a mad cop, all we need is a sympathetic human rights activist to tell us the backstory as to why he became the mad cop. Waiddaminit, this movie has confusing timelines! 

+7.2: SPB goes into his golden age raspy voice for one second in the opening song, that reminded us of many things. 

Editor’s note: Stop it right there. 

-21: Hero’s daughter randomly points to one girl in the whole of Mumbai city and she happens to be heroine, needless to say that the heroine is single (although never stated) etc. Convenient relationship status is extremely convenient. 

-53.2: Now hero is tasked with “okaying” heroine. Following scenes seem to have been taken from some national film archives which somehow safeguards these 80s type coffee type romance.

+22: Rajni makes a clear stand. He likes only filter coffee. Instant powder coffee down down. 

+23: Rajni makes an even more clear stand. Coffee shop sell overpriced coffee that don’t taste so good. 

Editor’s Note: We should avoid such snide social commentary like these in our reviews, coffee shops are modern places  where minds can meet and discuss…stuff, in essence as many business books written by professors inform me that really we are not paying only for the coffee but for the ‘experience’. Much like how in movie theatres we are not paying for the movie alone but for the ‘experience’. 

<Hand Baby (Kai Kuzhandai) in audience goes Kua Kua Kua incessantly, FRS writers record this as part of ‘experience’> 

+12: Movie suddenly becomes serious and wants us to care about human trafficking 

+13: Movie suddenly becomes more serious (of course in between Yogi Babu comedy track is there) and wants us to care about drug menace

Remind us to cut points when movie later will completely forget these issues. 

-67: Movie suddenly then becomes about Mumbai Police finding their respect among the citizenry which was lost because of an old incident. 

-23: Heroine akka simply calls Hero to some random marriage because one girl has lost her chain. The reason for calling is because hero is Police Commissioner. After this, there is the dreaded marriage song, where hero goes and gives advice to marriage couple without knowing who they are, even other relatives don’t know who this person is, although no issue is made of the same

-34: All songs whenever and wherever, even BGM is fully with words like Thalaiva and Superstar with percussion….we mean..what is this? 

+6: Nothing really happens for a while then director decides to introduce the main villain, who will always be an international gangster. 

+11: Said villain has been elected as the head of all gangsters, seems like a quasi democratic process too! Long live gangster democracy! 

Editor’s Note: kindly remove gangster democracy. Chumma Kizhi. Take this out I say. 

-23: Movie bounces here and there, like Rajni’s hair before making it another hero vs villain fight which we know hero will win

-40.9: Movie thinks it is actually putting obstacles in the way of the hero, but then we never really feel anything, to make a show of it, movie decides to suspend Aaditya Arunachalam and then before you put your hands to scrape the bottom of the popcorn box, he is reinstated. So much for the show. 

But that suspension scene reminded us of THAT scene from Thangapadakkam (watch from 6:00 mins)

-7: Useless villain, when he has the opportunity to escape and come back with a better plan, decides to stay back and get hit by hero. 

-502: To Mumbai City planners, a ghastly fire accident has happened some 20 years back and you guys have not pulled down the potentially unsafe building but have actually made it into a memorial. What is this? 

+303: Hero inspires kid to wear police uniform. Now whole city respects the cops, drug problem is solved, human trafficking is reduced. All problems solved. All is well. Go and sleep peacefully. 

Editor’s Note: This is not very funny. Happy New Year. Include go and sleep peacefully as the last line. Thanks. 

All numbers are incidental and arbitrary, except the facts provided by our data analytics team

Subam

Team FRS

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cinema cinema:tamil FRS

FRS: Saamy 2 aka Saamy Square

saamy-2-46So you all know what an FRS is right? right?

+120: To director Hari.

critics have often told that he tends take things a few notches higher; Hari seems to have taken this criticism to heart and named the film as Saamy square which means that the current film is a result of multiplying the first movie by itself.

+6: Aarusaamy is back

Vikram so much looks the character that he makes it look like they are using extended footage from the first film shot 27 years ago.

(no this is not a side-reference to Vishwaroopam/Vishwaroop 2)

-10: Weather and mother nature start behaving badly when Aarusaamy gets angry 

(no this is not a side-reference to Sabu from Chacha Chaudhary comix)

-12: Just when you thought that there was not going to be any narration, there is. 

+18: Aishwarya Rajesh plays Bhuvana

the character essayed by Trisha in the original; but we did not see any “ivarukku badhil ivar types” serial credits at the start thus making it momentarily difficult.

-10: Aarusaamy has been married happily for over a year, but never has he once realized that the ultimate goal of his wife was to become an IAS officer #notcouplegoals

-70: Suddenly there are three sons of the original villain and all of them come from Srilanka,

the chief of them is even named Ravana; obviously hero name is Ramasaamy

+45.9: Bobby Simha as Ravana Pitchai is one of the best antagonist portrayals this year, he gets an accent, a signature killing move, a creepy BGM and performs even, just forget about the beard though.

-32: Cronies of Perumal Pitchai do not question the authority of the ‘newly-sprouted’ sons and not even one of them come to stake claim.

We hope that, this portion will be covered in the Netflix series called Saamy 1.5 or square root of Saamy 

-714: Movie suddenly says “28 years later”, which means movie should take place in 2032 but actually takes place in our time only. 

Alternate movie suggest: Saamy 2032 aka Saamy From the Future

{Aarusaamy Jr aka “6” is a humanoid robot in the service of Tirunelveli Police, which is now being run entirely by robots to fight crime against the ARUVA 2.0 gang (Artificial Robots Used For Violence and Arson) 

Accidentally ‘halwa’  falls in his mouth during a drug bust and 6 starts to believe that he is a human police and goes in search of true meaning; we can get Denis Villeneuve interested no?} 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<GET ON WITH IT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

+561: Movie suddenly becomes a supernatural police action film, even though this was totally unexpected, it blew our minds.

+327: Obsessive Hari heroes are obsessive about  transport

Ramasaamy (Vikram again after trim shaving Aarusaamy get-up) actually mugs entire flight time tables (both public and private air carriers), he is also very specific about kilometers etc; so good.

We believe the biggest beneficiaries of the Udaan scheme of the government are Hari movie heroes namely Singham and Saamy. Doing their bit to encourage aviation in tier 2 cities.

But Saamy is one step lower than Singham, who is known to recite  latitudes and longitudes of places by heart, thus making Google maps skip an update.

<Let’s cross our fingers for a Duraisingham and Ramasaamy crossover, should be in the lines of Ramasaamy becomes a rogue police official and Duraisingam is tasked to bring him in. Let’s call it Toothukudi: Civil War>

-201: Heroine is “foreign return”

Keerthy Suresh studies a one year course in human psychology from University of Liverpool, but does not realize that incessantly calling IPS officers during work times could irritate them.

-107: Heroine’s father is a politician in Delhi; but did not send her daughter to JNU for the psychology course.

Was he afraid she would become urban naxal or was cut-off too high? Many such open questions.

-21: Name of coffee shop where hero and heroine meet in Delhi is : Delhi Coffee Shop

(I mean come on guys!)

+17: Second time in the history of Tamil film where heroine comes and disturbs a training session at some military academy in the hills. Hi to GVM.

-305.2: It is 2018 and Soori still thinks getting himself hit by others is funny, but the joke is on us because he is there in every other film.

+7: Mildly funny Keerthy Suresh is mildly funny, she should be paid for comedic quotient.

<Business Model Moment>

Can we evolve a model where we can track the amount of laughter generated in comedy scenes in theatres, parameters could be wild-to-mild laughter and claps and then pay the comedians as a proportion to their success? This could be a merit based model which could motivate comedians to come up with actually funny stuff.

</Business Model Moment>

-34: All songs whenever, wherever 

+101: One killing set-piece

+50: Movie suddenly becomes Mad Max Fury Road in the Thar desert before the climax (one more surprise), but some sections of the audience were furious (FURIOSA!)  because run-time just crossed 7 hours.

+23: Hero establishes greatness of the police police force by choosing IPS over IAS; wait we have seen that…um…never mind

-5: Convenient transfer to Thirunelveli is highly convenient

+71: Ramasaamy has the President of India on his email contacts, and they CONVERSE IN CAPS!

Oh wait, there are plans to make it a sequel too. Saamy Cubism?

<All numbers are incidental and irrelevant, except the data provided by our data analytics team based out of PUNE>

Yours sincerely

Team FRS

Subam

Vanakkam

 

 

 

 

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cinema cinema:tamil FRS Uncategorized

FRS: Bogan

 

Hi

 

Right, we all know what an FRS is right? right?

 

bogan1

+50: Hero is Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) which is the go-to designation for heroes playing cops, TN Police in an unofficial statement said that the morale of ACP aspirants had gone up by 50% since Tamil cinema discovered the post. Jeyam Ravi is the 300th person to don the role. He himself had played the designation a record 12 times.

-12: Hero is honest means it is assured that hero’s family is also honest to the core, sometimes we are confused if this is family or Sabarmati Ashram.

-17: Hero’s house looks like proper Madras type building, inside however the decor looks like some castle in Budapest (are there castles in Budapest? i dunno, Europe is out of portions for me); maybe art director landed up at the different film set.

I wonder.

-81: Supporting characters as non entities, basically I believe characters are written only for top billed actors (if writing is actually thought of value in a film), it is like Aadukalam Naren means father only, and since we have seen him play the same role so many times, same case with Saranya Ponnvanan. Like while writing they just give names I guess.

-10.78: Hansika’s name is Mahalakshmi Azhagamperumal, is like rooted to society in naming if characters, but casting? Oh well, lets not be unkind.

-12: Hansika’s voice seems to have been dubbed by the person who dubbed for Dora in the tamil version of Dora the Explorer , if someone clarifies that this was for comedic effect, we will of course revert the points to positive. Thank you.

-41: This movie wouldn’t have been made, if Thani Oruvan had not happened, which is quite sad because Thani Oruvan is actually quite good.

bogan3

-31.23333: Director doesn’t realize that characters only came back in their own sequel/franchise model; is not like Aravind Swamy can go on playing Sidharth Abhimanyu (his role from Thani Oruvan) in ever film, here of course he plays Aditya Verma(Varma?) which is just Sidharth Abhimanyu with a different name.

-5: I have signed on Aravind Swamy, so he will always speak in ‘deeeeep’ voice type commitment

+10: Archaeological Survey of India

-107: So Aditya Verma (Varma?) is actually shown as a prince, whose family had lost all their possessions because Government of India took all of it, which at some point seems acceptable, but what isn’t acceptable is that they actually show the Red Fort as one Verma (varma?)’s palaces.

Before you say WTF, they show Mysore Palace as well, we waited till end credits in the hope that they are going to show Marlinspike Hall as Arvind Swamy’s summer home.

Umm..no luck

-120: Maan Karate rule of abuse of spiritual power (or) The Baba theory of kite wishing

In other words whenever in a Tamil film, a character is bestowed with some sort of divine power, they put it to the most trivial tests.

-23:  Hero climbing out of helicopter and walking slowly is considered as Masss/Style. Edho

+55: Hansika goes to TASMAC and asks for a drink so that she can be bold and stuff, sensing this is the first portrayal of dutch courage on the tamil screens, yes were are now international #ulagacinema

-7: Even while drunk, heroine will talk about numerology #yeppa

+16: SJ Suryah references! (Is this a positive or a negative, benefit of doubt based positive)

+41: One scene or is it half a scene (are there half scenes? dammit we are so under prepared as reviewers) in which Arvind Swamy speaks to himself in a mirror

+5: For the number of newsminute articles on sexism in the tamil filmdom, this movie will lend itself to as fodder.

-190.59: If you have been seeing movies on a regular basis, twists in a film stop registering or creating an effect on you after a point of time, especially in a film which uses the reviewer friendly phrase of ‘cat and mouse’ type format, where there is a supposed battle of wits and there are crosses, double crosses and railway crosses happening, sleep comes to you automatically. Maybe this should be prescribed to insomniacs.

-21: Second half of movie should have been titled ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Long’

First part should be titled, ‘wait till you get to the second half’

-37: All songs whenever, wherever, special mention to a party number which spells out BOGAN 300 times, troubling.

+11: the fact that Bogan rhymes with Dragon has been used to good effect.

-91: Commisioner of Police Control Room Server maintenance will take 15 minutes only, dei

0: Movie comes close to being actually bold at one point, but never really is. I am guessing the director should have stuck with his Dutch Courage theme.

-151: Some kind of logic this police offer hero has, whenever there is a video evidence, you take multiple copies of it for safety, you don’t destroy other copies, edho da.

-78.91: All commercial movies will end in a pointless fight in Chennai Harbour, and there is this promise of sequel also.

+5: Expected the movie to be troubling, was not disappointed.

bogan4

All numbers are irrelevant and arbitrary. All spelling and grammar mistakes are intentional, because we dont know grammar only. Semi-colon. LOL;

The FRS team

Subam