Thunivu Is Hands-Down Ajith’s Career’s Worst Film

How  could  Ajith  a star of mammoth stature,subject  himself to this kind of garbage?!After being  hooted out of the theatres Thunivu in Tamil is  streaming  on Netflix.

It is a  shamefully lowbrow crowd-wooer with  zero tolerance for subtlety. Loud,uncouth and self congratulatory. it ranks among the lowest level of  achievement  by a significant superstar in  a non-Hindi film.

Heist films are  by their very nature  very difficult to  pull through. The  plot has to be action-driven  and yet the characters have to be etched in deep shades. Thunivu errs on both counts. The writing is super-sloppy with characters  streaming into  a  hostage-held bank  as if  it’s  a ticket-free carnival.

Cars  blow up. Cops are  summoned to the spot. They come with so much baggage  it feels like they are out to create more waste than abort the heist.

The  iconic  Ajith plays a gangster with a giant-sized  machine  gun  named Dark Devil…the hero and not his gun is named that,  let me  hasten to  clarify.

Dark Devil is a salt-and-no-pepper bearded dude .He  voice-ghosts the cops  by  speaking  in  Michael Jackson’s  voice  and calling himself MJ. To  make  sure we are  tickled  pink  by this  ingenuous  cloudburst  of humour, the camera quickly cuts to  bystanders asking questions likr, ‘Who is this Michael Jackson?’

A couple more films like Thunivu, and people  will be asking the same about Ajith.  Not only is  his  Salman-styled  action completely out of place, Ajith  makes it worse with his  crowdpleasing  improvisations like  doing the moonwalk and dancing while firing his  gun.

I  didn’t see  the film with a live audience.  But I can’t imagine Ajith’s fans being pleased with his undignified  cool-dude act. The machine gun never leaves his hand. It is his romantic lead  in the film. There is  a woman protagonist played by Manju Warrier who is to Ajith what Dimple  Kapadia  is to Shah  Rukh Khan in Pathaan.

Action films need a straightforward narrative like Pathaan.In  Thunivu  writer-director K Vinoth meanders all over the place in the hope that the audience wouldn’t  be able to nail down the plot for what it  is: utter nonsense.