Sabari

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Cast: Vijayakanth, Jyothirmayi, Malavika, Pradeep Rawat, Pithamagan Mahadevan
Direction: Suresh
Production: Salem Chandrasekhar
Music: Mani Sharma

‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, that is an old adage; some of the clouds nowadays are dark enough to hide any silver lining that might be present. Vijayakanth has had a long dignified innings in the Tamil film industry, he is respected, called Captain by all people in the industry and yet he chooses so regularly to appear in such mediocre fare that is of use only to mimicry artistes and other stand up comedians who make a living by ridiculing the absurdities that are played out on screen in the name of action, sentiment, righteousness and patriotism.
By the time this review is read by more than a handful of Behinwoods users, Sabari’s postmortem would have begun in Chennai. The first thing that strikes you about Sabari is that the story seems far too familiar. Listening to the same story over and again is fine if the story is interpreted in a different way (there are so many versions of the Ramayana) or if the story is an all time classic (like Godfather). But when it is neither you find it difficult to stifle yawns. The only element that gives the movie an identity is the description of the atrocities faced by Lankan migrants at the hands of the border police. That is the only part that has been sensitively picturized; the rest is plain pedestrian in standards.

Sabari
For the first time in his career Vijayakanth appears as a doctor (heart specialist). But the attire apart the rest of the character remains the same. He is eternal do-gooder opposing all forms of corruption in the medical field. Not that there is anything wrong with this but one wonders whether there is no better way than strong dialogues and fights to do this. The scenes of the movie just play themselves out on screen, most of them are disjointed; don’t even think of flow and tempo.
Sabari

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When Malavika appears in the two songs and the one or two scenes one tries to reason out her presence in the movie. The script is like a weak engine burdened by an extra carriage (Malavika’s character); the movie already moving at a sluggish pace crawls slower; then there is Jyothirmayi’s character: lesser said the better, this character is more extraneous than Malavika’s. The villain is a juke box of a variety of sounds; high pitched, hoarse……. One wonders what he is trying to do, catching hold of someone then letting him go only to chase him down and kill him; all very confusing. The songs in the movie are an absolute relief, people take the opportunity to walk out and stretch their legs.
All in all, disappointing is too kind a word to use for this kind of a movie. It is hard to imagine what the director, actor and producer had in mind when the movie was made. It’s now a trilogy of flops for Captain. MLA or not, the movie has to be good to become a hit. Salem Chandrasekhar could have chosen a better script to produce after the success of Ghajini.

Sabari: an absolute dud.

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