Unnaipol Oruvan is really good

Unnaipol oruvan the remake of Hindi film Wednesday is really good. With towering personalities like Kamal and Mohan lal acting, the movie has been released under high expectations. That too this month marking the 50th year of Kamal's acting career and the launch of Shruti as debutant music director, the expectations were really high. The movie is fulfilling and meets the expectation.

They have done that by not experimenting too much (like some other hindi/telugu remakes have done) and sticking faithfully to the original screeplay which was a master piece. I am also glad that they have stuck to the original - including the side kathais like the wife of Cop-1 travelling by train & the sister misbehaviour episode of Muslim Cop-2 etc. Mohan lal has more screen time than Anupam Kher did and its nice of Kamal to do that. Infact Mohan Lal gets more screen time than Kamal in this movie. The 2 towering personalities make their screen presence felt in every inch of the frame.

The things that have been done better than the original are, the beuaracractic wrangles between IAS, IPS, CM (in Kalaignar's voice) etc. They are really beleivable after what we saw between the executives after the law college incident on who should take the stick. Lakshmi's role as Malathi is nicely conceived - esp the way she 'pammufies' with kalaignar makes you feel she is really a TN cadre IAS. ;)

The things that have not been done well are, mainly the backdrop of why Kamal is doing all this.. That is not as impactful or forceful as what Shah explains in the original about the unknown names but familiar faces in his daily morning train & what happened to them on the day he missed his train. We were able to empathize with the protoganist better out there. Again, Because of Kamal's diehard nature to make his characters echo his personal point of views, like nathigam, leftism, Post-godhra hatred etc. the impact of the what the terrorists have done to the common Indian man is getting diluted.. I like the points which Kamal says, but they dont fit into the current context of the movie... Infact you some times we get a feel there is a sentimental balance on the terrorist's motive side as well - which the original didnt have... This should have been avoided by staying closer to the original.

Similarly the climax sequence of shoot-out was more forceful in Hindi on why Muslim cop refuses to let one of the terrorists go & how they decide to shoot him finally. Here Kamal goes on a long lecture and then Mohanlal says thalai, and soon he has it. In Hindi, when Shah asks for the indentification of the terrorists they blurt out a track record which makes you grow red in anger and are able to empathize better with Shah. Here everyone says one line and you dont quite feel the same amount of hatred.

I dont know what they gained by making Anuja a smoker - that felt artificial especially for tamil audience mentality. May be Kamal is doing some culture adjustment testing for his next movie ;)

Similarly, there are 2 places which I didnt like the way they have adapted.. Anupam Kher works out that there are no more bombs and changes over to plain clothes and leaves to meet the common man.. so when Shah calls to say, there are no bombs, he says 'mujhe maloom hai', whereas mohan lal only says 'I guessed so' that reduces mohanlal's intelligence levels a bit compared to Kher. Similarly, in Hindi when the computer geek is about to say where the location is, it is kher who presses his shoulders gently and sees the monitor for the actual location and makes him say "search unsucessful". Here they have made it almost like the geek gets a bout of moral conscience and refuses to reveal the result of location search. Same is true with R.S.Sivaji. This again reduces Mohanlal's command on the show.

Yeah small things aside, the movie is good and I am glad that Kamal did not add some real songs in the middle of the movie to fulfil Shruti's aspirations of debut. Athu paNNi irunthaa movie-oda pace romba spoil irukkum. Thank you Kamal !.

Over-all, true to the original. Really good watch !