‘Ayudha Porattam’ (Tamil)
Director: Jai Akash
Cast: Jai Akash, Preethi Minal, Anita Reddy, Theepetti Ganeshan, Saikiran, Adith Seenivas, Neeraj Purohit, Chithiram Basha
A lackadaisical sloppy approach to script and presentation, and a lack of serious honest effort to justify the complex concept tackled, makes ‘Ayudha Porattam’ a mockery of the whole cause, providing unintended entertainment at most places.
Jai Akash’s career has never really taken off despite the dozen and more films he has done, mainly due to wrong selection of scripts. This time, the director-hero has taken on the additional burden of a producer too, apart from scripting, directing and playing the hero. One thought he would take a cautious approach this time. But it’s misplaced confidence that is unabashedly displayed.
Set in the backdrop of the closing years of the ethnic war in Sri Lanka and its aftermath, the plotline looks jaded. Shoddily scripted, there are innumerable logical lapses, gaping holes and unanswered questions. The film opens a couple of years back in Sri Lanka, where some Tamil militants are shown raging bitterly against India’s help to the Sinhalese forces to destroy the Tamil cause.
The story shifts to the present and to Chennai, where a group of seven designers for a weapon manufacturing company are sent to the factory’s guest house in the interiors of some Sri Lankan forest. For a ‘team building exercise’ as their boss says. Why not to some forest around here, than the strife torn island is incomprehensible.
The scene shifts to the island nation and to the dilapidated guest house in a deserted forest area. Their bus breaks down, the man who was to receive them is missing, their mobiles catch no signal, and there is no provision for food either. But all this doesn’t seem to cause any worry to the team. They do just one ‘team -building’ exercise, of walking on a rope-bridge left by the forces earlier. There is time for romance, and dancing too probably without a choreographer.
There is a man with a partly painted face stalking the group, obviously with an agenda. The explanation comes later. But by then, one loses total interest in the happenings, and it doesn’t matter what the cause is, and who is eliminated by whom. The costumes of the two women of the group are badly designed and crudely revealing. Jai Akash's mannerism of constantly puffing on a ganja- tipped cigarette is jarring, particularly when neither the expression nor the body language matches the action.
‘Ayudha Porattam’ is confused issues, and misguided direction. A few more misadventures such as this, rather than resurrecting the hero’s dipping career, will on the contrary make it non-existent.