5 Best Films Of Tamil Superstar Vijay

The 5 Best Of  Vijay

1.     Naalaiya Theerpu(1992):  Vijay’s first  film as an adult actor   was an emotional  mother-son story featuring the  great  Srividya  as Vijay’s mother. Vijay who never  speaks to the media once  told  a co-actor that this is the  only  film of his career  where    he  cried genuine tears.  The film about  an abused  wife and a devoted son, made Vijay an  instant star. It was produced  and  directed  by Vijay’s father S A Chandrashekar and  written by his mother Shoba. After watching the  film recently I wondered  why Vijay didn’t more  emotional  films .He  is good at the  rona-dhona but  according to his  fan(atics)  even  better at  villains  ko dhona

2.     Thupakki(2012): A soldier’s duty is  never  done. Sounds familiar? Akshay Kumar too played  the  role of the  army soldier  who cracks  a terror attack during his  holidays.But it  was Vijay who nailed  the  part. In a huge rush of adrenaline he re-defined the  super-hero’s space without  the cape  or the mask.Some  Islamic  organizations objected to the  film which  trotted  on to become  a  big winner.

3.     Mersal(2017) : Vijay fans  were very happy. There are three Vijays  in his  new film, all shaped contoured and moulded into  red-hot come-see-about-me avatars.So 3 stars for  the eminently enjoyable new Vijay starrer, 1 each for  the  3 roles that the superstar  embraces  like lovers who won’t be parted  till kingdom come.Or apocalypse dodged.Indeed Vijay’s self-love  is celebrated by the rest of the besotted smitten cast who in true Tamil-Telugu tradition of hero-worship keep anointing eulogizing, glorifying and  iconizing  the super-hero to  a point where no  criticism is permissible or  even plausible.While the entire vast cast that includes three lovely leading ladies(all three so serene and surrounding in a haze  of idolatry numbness),can’t stop singing Vijay’s praise  he himself seems  to be a fan  of  the legendary M G Ramachandran. How do I know? He has  MGR’s pictures on the wall and he even visits a theatre showing an  MGR film.Jayalalithaji—God bless her  departed soul—would have surely approved  of this,Vijay’s most fiercely  political statement  to date.Indeed Rajiniknath and now  Vijay are the two inheritors  of  the Tamil political cinema that MGR patented  in  his heydays.  In Mersal Vijay takes on healthcare with a blood-thirsty vengeance .There are aggressive contemptuous references to the Establishment’s failure to provide medical facilities  for the poor and needy .And we have Vijay wagging his disapproving finger at the Prime Minister with the words—and I translate poorly—“In Singapore the ill get free treatment although they charge 7 percent GST whereas in India they charge 29 percent GST and still don’t provide free healthcare.”I dare any Bollywood superstar,to be so openly  critical  of  governmental policies.It takes guts for a matinee idol to talk politics.

4.     Bigil(2019):  Bigil which  means  ‘whistle’ in Tamil lives up to its title. There were wolf whistlers  and banshee shrieks of orgasmic  exhilaration in the  theatre every time Vijay came on screen.I couldn’t hear  the  dialogues. I suspect  we are not  meant to.Considering he has two roles , Vijay is on screen almost the entire running-time of  three hours. He  plays  an angry  football coach, not unlike Shah Rukh Khan in Chak De,  except that Khan never danced, sang and fought goons(in the one fight  sequence in Chak De  he let his hockey team to beat up the  goons).Vijay never stops. The career  dilemma for a  superstar who must deliver  what his fans want, is here resolved by  positioning Vijay as a star with human frailties on display. He is a  football coach and prone to bouts  of identity crisis  because of a troubled  relationship with his father which is opened up like a wound  in a flashback.As his own  father Vijay is not too convincing. His body language suggests no age. Only suppressed  rage. The son Bigil ( a.k.a Michael) is Shah Rukh Khan’s Chak De avatar reborn .There are  flashes  of  genuine warmth in Michael’s  interaction with his  all-women’s  football team  which,  though representational(one  acid victim , etc) manages to make  a large  statement on  why women  are left behind in the  field of sports.Director Atlee doesn’t  allow Vijay’s stardom to diminish  even as  sections show the actor struggling with issues that go beyond patriarchal  arrogance. It would be too much to expect humility in Vijay’s performance. But he comes  closer to vulnerability in this  film  than any  other. 

5.     Master(2021) : It takes  a Vijay to  bring them back to the theatres. Covid be damned, Master  has proven  a monster blaster at  the  boxoffice in the South. Now two weeks later it comes to us  on the streaming platform. But the fire-and-brimstone  impact  of  a demi-god striding  across  the screen as he takes on the  vile villains ,is lost at home.To enjoy a Vijay starrer  you have to watch it with his  fans as they shriek their approval  every time he breaks a bone or breaks  into a dance. This  time  I have to admit the script  supports  the Tamil  superstar’s iconic  image with  twists and turns that are frenetic but  neither  incoherent nor disjointed.There is  none of that disdain for rules of  storytelling that we’ve seen  in the other recent Vijay starrers. On the contrary  I’d say this is  the superstar’s  first genuine stab at a socio-political  relevance.At one point Vijay smirks  and says, “Some  here may not like me. But there are  millions out there  who  do,” drawing  attention to his  popularity  that  threatens  to  seep into politics. Vijay plays  JD(no idea what it stands for) a college lecturer hero-worshipped  by his students even though he is  notorious for his drinking habits.After  6 pm, he  is out of his senses, boast his admiring fan-pupils speaking of him in folklore  fashion, as though alcoholism was a form  of meditation. Which if you are Vijay,  it probably is.