Wasn’t Vettaiyan worth the wait?

Amitabh Bachchan and Rajinikanth in T J Gnanavel’s Vettaiyan

Malayalam star Fahadh Faasil, as ‘Cyber' Patrick, a former thief, who helps out the police, in T J Gnanavel's Tamil tentpole, Vettaiyan, says that there are essentially four following kinds of cops (in the world, or India, at any rate).

Honest + brave. Capable + dishonest, but throwing their weight around. Honest, but dumb. Finally, the "kachra" (crappiest): neither intelligent nor honest.

Which reminds me of the quadrants that General Douglas McArthur divided officers into - also quoted in an interview by a sitting Bombay police commissioner (Arup Patnaik), once.

The four types of officers being: lazy, dumb, intelligent, and hardworking.

Jai Bhim

Of these, McArthur postulated, the ones to be bumped up topmost, for devising strategies, are actually the lazy + intelligent - they solve problems, without spending needless energy on inconsequential stuff.

Those to be instantly discarded are the dumb + hardworking! Couldn't agree more. Above all the categories, ‘Cyber' Patrick adds, is the rarest officer - who's intelligent, honest, and brave.

That's Rajinikanth for SP, Athiyan, in Vettaiyan (Hunter) - as the screen customarily flashes ‘Superstar' in golden letters, and ‘Thailava' does his cigarette-trick, with removable lenses of eyeglasses, instead; flipping his Samsung phone, with a swag.

His ‘takia kalaam' (recurring refrain), since I watched Vettaiyan in Hindi, goes: "Nishana lagaya toh shikaar pucca (If I aim, the hunt is certain)."

SP Athiyan is an ‘encounter-specialist', placed alongside, among others, with Daya Naik, in a power-point presentation, delivered at the National Police Academy (Hyderabad), by Amitabh Bachchan as Sathyadev.

Stills from the director's previous films, Kootathil Oruthan

Bachchan plays a jurist in the film, deeply invested in human-rights issues, over matters of extra-judicial killings by the police, wherein "justice delayed may be justice denied; but justice hurried is [equally] justice buried!"

Rana Daggubati (Baahubali's Bhallaladeva) is the real villain, entering only much later. He runs an online education scam.

Which is why Vettaiyan starts off with a primer on Lord Macaulay, who devised both the Indian Penal Code, and India's education policy, in the early 1800s - a lesson in history that you don't expect from a desi, mainstream actioner.

Vettaiyan is a semi-angry polemic. Strong strains of which you inevitably experience in a section of Tamil commercial cinema, with directors like Pa. Ranjith, or Vetrimaaran, furthermore the patron saints.

That's a reason you had Shah Rukh Khan passionately lecture mass audiences on the importance of the vote, before the election year, in Atlee's Jawan (2023) - the hero even flashing his palm on the screen, as an electoral symbol for the importance of the Opposition!

Hindi viewers were visibly surprised. It's commonplace in Tamil Nadu, where pictures = politics. Also, a reason, Jawan > Pathaan. Which is separate from propaganda, that's like porn - you just know it, when you
see one.

Audiences go in for the star, still. How many are there in Vettaiyan? Easily the most sparkling constellation, between their languages: Rajinikanth (Tamil), Bachchan (Hindi), Faasil (Malayalam), Daggubati (Telugu).

Yet, it took me four days to pick a solitary screen, across Bombay, with a suitable timing, that too late-afternoon, in a decrepit hall, to finally watch Vettaiyan!

"It released in [all of] 850-900 screens, across India, outside the South," Girish Wankhede, who worked on the film's North India marketing, tells me.

The tussle between national multiplex chains (that won't open Vettaiyan), and Tamil Nadu producers, is over the permissible time-lag, between a film's theatrical release, and its OTT premiere.

What a stupid stalemate, even while I'm on the side of theatres in this dogfight. It's continued long enough that you also caught Rajinikanth's decent, last release, Jailer, on OTT (Prime Video).

Or Lokesh Kanagaraj's Vijay-starrer, Leo (on Netflix), for that matter. The latter, I felt, was sort of a remake of Mukul Anand's Hum (1991). That was the last time Rajinikanth and Bachchan were on screen together - setting it on such fire that it's not been doused since!

Besides the onscreen constellation, who's really the star of Vettaiyan? Undoubtedly, the director, Gnanavel.

To even think, that his Jai Bhim (2021, Prime Video) - a heavily art-house, immeasurably bleak vision of police atrocities against Irula tribespeople - with actor Suriya, playing an activist-lawyer, with the bust of Karl
Marx staring from the wall behind his desk, would subsequently result in the biggest blockbuster casting, in years?

Vettaiyan is about a good cop, albeit employing questionable means. Jai Bhim is altogether a film on bad cops, but for Prakash Raj's character. It's as if the two movies are talking to each other.

Harder to believe still that Gnanavel debuted with a classic teenage romcom, Kootathil Oruthan (One Among The Crowd, 2017), about a ‘middle-bencher, average guy' (Ashok Selvan): "If life's a race, he neither wins nor loses, he's in the crowd, clapping!" But he's in love with a girl, who's 10/10.

The film's got a vague touch of Napoleon Dynamite (2004), maybe Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008), even the latest Faasil flick, Aavesham (2024), if you must. It's set entirely in a journalism school. Should've found more love.

Filmmaker Gnanavel is a former journalist, who's extensively reported the story, indeed the judge, that Jai Bhim is based on. Also, the restaurant chain Sarvana Bhawan's murder-saga, which is his next, titled, Dosa King.

Can't wait for that, while I guess, many of you might have to wait for Vettaiyan on an OTT.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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