Movie: 10 Endrathukulla
Direction: Vijay Milton
Cast: Vikram, Samantha, Pasupathy, Jackie Shroff, Ramdoss, Sampoornesh Babu
Music Director: D. Imman
Cinematography: Bhaskaran K.M
Editor: Sreekar Prasad
Genre: Action
Rating: ∗∗
What is it about: A daredevil transporter James Bond (Vikram) is always on top gear with his job, he does petty works and makes his living through it. He also works as a Driving school teacher which happens to be his cover for the other profession. To his bad luck he meets a student Shakeela (Samantha) who comes to the driving school to get her license for the umpteenth time. He does his best to make her learn but it doesn’t help. As this chores continue, James Bond’s new employer (Pasupathy) gets him a job which will pay him big bucks. He accepts it, with no questions asked he embarks on the journey. What job is he assigned? What is he getting in to? Forms the crux of the story written and directed by Vijay Milton.
Why it’s disappointing: This one tries hard to imitate the much enjoyed “Transporter” series from Hollywood. But it fails terribly, the reason being poor treatment to the screenplay. The very first intro scene of Vikram, gives you a clear picture, what you’re getting in to for next couple of hours.
It’s too disappointing to see a director who can give a movie like “Goli Soda”, just dives in to a nonsense like “10 Endrathukulla”. This happens to be an action thriller, and to my surprise I was feeling sleepy, there was not one scene which was engaging. The movie just keeps rolling like the wheels on screen, with no direction.
Vikram terribly needs a good movie to reclaim his lost space. It breaks your heart to see an actor of this calibre is wasting his career on movies like this. Where is the Vikram which we loved in “Pithamagan”, “Sethu”….does he need the same director to reinvent himself? “I” was great but the movie let him down. In this his role can be done by any tom dick and harry, wonder why he picked this one, even if he needed a break for a commercial pot boiler, he could have done a better film. We loved him in “Dhill” & “Dhool”. I feel “Rajapattai” was better and engaging than this.
Samantha Ruth Prabhu, I read somewhere that the role in this flick was the toughest for her, I feel Sam that you could do better. You were given the happy go lucky girl attitude with some other shades overlapping at one instance in the flick. If you are referring to the action part, there’s not much which we can boast of. Still I would say, you can do better.
Villains from Bollywood, were another annoying part as the movie takes part in the North India most of the time, where we can see people speaking Tamil fluently with no difficulty. Abhimanyu Singh is a wonderful actor who is getting wasted in these kind of roles. On top of that the parts were Hindi is spoken was terrible, with no sense of that language.
The music was another disaster, there were hardly any songs. But the ones featured were not bearable except for the track “Vroom Vroom”, which is kind of upbeat. The background score was not great either.
The VFX was very poor, the parts were VFX were used was very evident which gave a cartoonish look. You will have scenes where you’ll see an animated car merged to a real landscape to make it look like they have shot the scene in that place. And this repeats a lot in the movie.
The main USP of this movie could have been the action sequences, even though they were choreographed well, the way it were presented doesn’t appeal.
What to watch out for: The only thing which makes it quite bearable is Pasupathy, who tries to keep our sanity together with his funny antics. The cinematography at places was good, especially which involved high speed chasing. The editing was decent by Sreekar Prasad.
Verdict: Vijay Milton in the process of making a high voltage action thriller, goes on top gear of nonsense which spells that word in BOLD letters. In spite of the big star cast, the ride dips down to the lowest gear making hard for it to move forward.
