Fooling Around !. Review on Pithamagan - Tamil Movie

Whenever I go to see a Tamil movie my expectations are pretty low. After all they hardly contribute in terms great cinema unless ofcourse it?s a Mani Ratnam film. But of late I heard of a director who has been in the news for making movies which are not only critically acclaimed but is also well received by the audience. His name is Bala and some of his earlier films include Sethu, Nanda. I havn?t seen any of his films before but from what I have heard from other people they are a must-see. So when I went to see Pithamagan I was expecting sensible cinema, not the usual Tamil movie stuff hero-worshipping ,women bashing , cheap jokes and vulgarity(a fat woman dancing to a ghana song showing a lot of flesh has almost become a norm for any hit movie).

So I enter Aurora theatre thanking them for releasing a Bala film in Mumbai ( I don?t think Sethu or Nanda released here ). Half way through the film and I was still wondering where the movie is heading. So yeah fine Chithan (Vikram )is a local village undertaker with animalistic behaviour, cant speak and is pretty numb when it comes to emotions.He goes around beating anyone who puts a hand on him We also have a female drug peddler, Gomathi, who looks after him. Enter Sakthi (Surya), who goes around duping everyone selling fake stuff. And then comes Laila , Surya?s love angle , and ohh boy !!! everything breaks loose ?..she screams , runs , jumps all over him throughout the first half. And this my friend is pure torture to your eyes and ears. Why did she ever become an actress ??? ?.that?s wat I kept asking my self whenever she came on screen . And oh yeah by the way, Chithan joins the drug lord of the village and works for him without being aware of wats going on around him.

Chithan gets caught while smuggling and our beloved Laila also hands Sakthi to the police .This is where our two heroes meet and a bonding develops between them. Chithan also goes around beating everyone in the jail and this surprises Sakthi and also arouses his sympathies for him . After serving their jail terms (Chithan is left off after paying a fine of 3 lakhs ?paid by their drug lord after being threatened by Sakthi )

Sakthi n Chithan live together at gomathi,s place . Gomathi falls for Chithan and of course Laila also falls for Sakthi . They bring about a change in Chithan making him laugh , cry , dance .

But like any typical movie the villian , the drug lord i.e., comes to know that sakthi had corporated with an IAS officer and revealed everything about them. He orders the killing of sakthi and in one of those rainy nights when our hero is with his heroine enjoying a bicycle ride , sakthi is killed and of course not without saving the heroine . Chithan realizes this and he goes on a rampage attack destroying everything belonging to the drug-lord and of course the drug lord him self. And Chithan becomes his old self again. Tragic ??!!

Films are made in an realistic manner because the story demands so or the because of the kind of idea the director wants to convey. But it seems Bala is making realistic movies just for the heck of making one and trying to be a ?different ? director. Showing a new born baby with the umbilical cord , showing people beaten up in jail in a closed room with a few rays of light entering the room , moving the camera through the forest , showing how the smuggling is done is fine but they hardly seem to go with the story . Its clear that Bala shot those scenes with the thought that he is making hard hitting realistic cinema. Even the end scenes where chithan kills the villain by biting of his throat is grouse ??so wat did he want show the liking he had for sakthi , how much he loathed the drug lord or rather that our hero has turned into a cannibal ??!!

Infact , Pithamagan is nothing different from the normal tamil movies . The love story between Surya and Laila is so typical . They keep fighting around in the first half . In the later half our hero tells her that I could have easily pulled off ur dress when u climbed on me , Laila reacts shocked and voila !! in the next scene she falls for surya !! What an utter piece of crap !! The ?pulling of ur dress ? dialogue was shot purely to envoke claps for the male audience , n this is wat I meant by women bashing . Some of the fight scenes in the first half of the film (though they r shot well) r quite gruesome but then this is wat the audience want ?.some hard core action n this is wat I meant by hero worshipping . And to satisfy the distributors a different type of an item number is also pushed in where Simran makes in an appearance. Though the dance number is decent n is actually a nice idea it comes in at the wrong place and wrong time of the movie .And the subplots of the film like the IAS officer investigating the smuggling case is half baked

Obviously , the best scenes in the movie are supposed to be the part where Chithan displays his human side but this is done in totally immature manner ?showing him dancing to the item number,asking the villian to get back sakthi towards the climax n many more . What could have been beautifully handled Bala misses out on the opportunity completely.

This film is just another revenge story with the exception of the tragic ending. Pray , then why promote it as as an exceptional cinema . I would rather watch a film like Saamy or a dhool which though have typical stories manage to be entertaining and don?t pretend to be great cinema like Pithamagan does ! But must admit Bala manages to fool quite a few of those film critics of Tamil Cinema.