Yes, I did see the movie – bear with me before I take you through the torturous two hours of my recent experience watching ‘Aayirathil Oruvan’. After an extra long movie night with more than usual alcohol, you might hit on a dream like this a few minutes before you are actually awake. I’d rather put up a public apology note instead of a disclaimer to have gathered my guts to watch this terribly compiled movie. I wish the Director could also use one to brandish his supposedly daring attempt to make this film. A fantasy movie, so to speak, does not have to compromise on the basic realism of life and sanity; He fails so miserably right from the first frame of the movie. The director does have a glaring disclaimer about the portrayal of historic characters; if he was so particular about qualifying his idea, the whole movie is a disclaimer by itself – a single line “THIS IS NOT A MOVIE” would have cautioned movie watchers to make a wise decision about spending the rest of the time watching carelessly woven crap. To begin with, there were too many reviews stating that this was a brave attempt by Selvaraghavan to open a new dimension in Tamil film making – I choose to think that senseless bravery is a fool’s virtue. And, coming to the idea of unraveling a new path in Tamil film industry, he’s certainly chopped the wrong tree. This is definitely not one of these movies that leave you in the edge of your seats with questions in your mind and, makes you squeeze the internet for answers.

The movie starts with a missing archaeologist (Prathap Pothen) who vanishes somewhere near Vietnam in search for a lost civilization from the 12th century. A group of experts led by an archaeologist (Reema Sen) takes the help of Prathap’s daughter (Andrea) to unlock the mystery behind her father’s disappearance. The director tries to drive home the point that there are still hard-hearted followers of the Pandya legacy to banish the trace of the Cholas and, reclaim a valuable sculpture that was lost when the last Chola prince escaped their clutches. No one has any clue about why the loader (Karthi) and his Band of brothers board the ship - let’s forgive that and carry on, shall we? Reema sen plays a skimpy clad bad girl gunslinger with a contrasting Andrea, always with a cherubic calm searching for something (we assume it is her dad). A private force led by a smoking barrel loud mouth (Azhagam Perumal) joins the experts with his brigade for security – “Guns. Lots of guns.”. The audience would have been innocent enough to least expect glimpses of Apocalypto or Raiders of the lost ark until now. Again, Karthi has tried too hard to fit himself in a role that veteran actors would kill for – I was then convinced about the director’s ‘Dream cast’ after these 15 minutes of the movie. After a series of nonsense and a brief song, the pack reaches the island; the whole team engages in a fight for life against red painted men, vicious snakes, fire and all possible ways of extinguishing life. Unpredictably, only the three people get stranded together! They walk through all possible terrains, run through childishly designed computer graphics to find the place they’ve longed to see. The insanity in this movie never seemed to end; there are people screaming right from the beginning and we are only halfway through. We are to kindly excuse the bad language in this movie as it is a soup from a number of Hollywood movies – especially, the girl fight makes you puke if you can even read your name in English.

The viewers are to discover that the director has a real talent to drive people insane with his nonsense; he’s imparted that to his version of the Cholas as well. After this, the movie takes a plunge into another world which is black, gory, cannibalistic, disgusting, incomprehensible, and bloody ridiculous. Here comes the last Chola king (Parthiban), taking pleasure in watching bloodshed – this sequence of scenes are so cacophonous and maddening. The history we have been taught of tells us of the Cholas as one of the well civilized, art-loving people and not as pitch black, white haired blood loving zombies – remember the disclaimer? Reema sen talks about her (funny) Pandya ancestry and the important people in the government who are determined to carry this task. After an epic battle with arrows, guns, rocks the movie ends with Karthi leaving with a boy from the Cholas. Phew! I really want to cut out on a lot of derogatory adjectives but, I’m still sane enough to hate this movie. I really would love to see someone stir up a defamation case against the Director for manipulating the history of South-India in the name of fantasy. How brilliant to have tucked in the song ‘Appadi podu’ in the last few minutes of the movie! Hail fuhrer! The helpless and distressed Chola women dancing to the song is sure to make the audience melt into tears. Reema sen did not cease to have that cheap look about her and the other two “actors” were strong competitors too. Karthi could have been easily replaced by a donkey and, the production could have saved some more money to cast another scantily clothed. On the flip side, even the director could have been replaced by a donkey; we don’t understand what a donkey thinks either!