Karuppu Pulsar Movie Review:
Debutant Murali Krish reminds us of a Tamil exam joke where a student spins an essay about a cow getting tied to a tree. Over the course of his debut film, Karuppu Pulsar, Murali doesn't just make the cow fly, but it also produces milk from its horns and gets tied to a bonsai plant at last. Similarly, what starts off as a revenge story, albeit insipid, gets coupled with his fascination for a Pulsar bike, has a few more genre specifics, and unfortunately, the debutant gets almost nothing right.
When there are no smarts involved in how the film unpacks itself, we'll let you assemble the plot yourself. There is the titular bike, which kills people, and finally finds a way to the protagonist Dasaratha Raja (Dinesh). There's the antagonist Selvam (Prinz Arjai), who gets flashes of Jallikattu and the bull he kills as it becomes a 'Pidimaadu' or a tamed bull, and he is disturbed by the sounds of the bike that plays in his head. Should we even spell out what the rest of the film is about.
The story that shifts between Chennai and Madurai has the Pulsar bike as its prime focus. This vehicle turned into a pop culture favourite with Vetri Maaran's debut film, Pollathavan. But that's where the connection stops. Also, Murali seems to have been inspired by Rajamouli's Naan Ee (Eega), where the hero has all odds stacked against him as he is plotting revenge over his death by being reborn as a housefly. Again, Murali G Krish is only fascinated by the idea and has never really thought out how to fit these ideas into his story's framework.
There are no limitations to what the bike does. Just like in a typical pei padam, it can toss and twirl a person. We would have loved to see how a bike operates in exacting its revenge and where it applies brakes. Without assigning the bike a character and limitations, it is merely brought as a replacement for a ghost.
Cast: Dinesh, Mansoor Ali Khan, Saravana Subbiah, Prankster Rahul, Prinz Arjai
Director: Murali Krish
Premised on vengeance, the writing should have been inventive on how the bike switches hands. Spoiler Alert - if you consider this a spoiler - the bike that can single-handedly kill people was at the antagonist's place all the time before killing someone and weirdly sending someone into a coma, and finally reaching Dasaratha Raja. The film could have ended straightaway with Selvam getting mauled by it. But like the other victims, the bike and the film had to torment the audience members for an exhausting 114 minutes. Yes, exhausting with just a runtime of 114 minutes. It would have also been a lot easier on us if there were helpings of humour in this space of Dasaratha Raja getting a Pulsar discarding his TVS Champ. No, Murali G Krish is not done putting us through hell already with his tacky plot and characters. The torturous film gets hard to sit through with a punishing humour track courtesy of Mansoor Ali Khan's Kaveri and Prankster Rahul's Hariharan. With lines like ‘Periya Hayabusa, Poda Aaya’ and ‘Unakku Thuppa Dhaan Theriyum, Enakku Kudichitu Vaandhiye Edukka Therium,’ it is a choice between hell and high water in us choosing between the main conflict and the comedy track.
What makes Karuppu Pulsar unforgivable is its token messaging, which is a gross underestimation of the audience's intellectual capability. A cop character, Velraj (Saravana Subbaiah), introduced solely for a flashback reveal, is as contrived as it could get. Dialogues were slapdash to say the least. Velraj, just before Dasaratha Raja seeks help with his troubled bike, would have been saying to someone over the phone that he will take action no matter how politically influential the accused is and explains that Selvam's political reach stopped him from acting on his atrocity in Madurai. A half-baked message on the exclusion of Dalits in Jallikattu, after the dullard romantic and comedy sequences, doesn't really seem to be coming from a place of genuine concern. The film, with no redeemable qualities, can just be proud of its crisp runtime, and nothing else.