Sagar Alias Jacky. Whoa, what a movie!
I sat down to watch this movie yesterday (on Asianet, Christmas Day special) with the lowest of expectations. Every review I read about this movie said it was crap. But I guess the reviews were wrong, or my expectations were low enough that I found the movie good.
I loved this movie. What direction. What cinematography and background score. The only thing I didn’t like about this movie was Mohanlal. Man, that guy’s fat! Seeing a fat guy like him walk around in tight dresses and run and beat people leaner than him is kinda unrealistic. If the director had put someone else in his place - Mamooty, Dileep, or even Prithiviraj - things would be much more believable.
I can understand why this movie was a flop though. It is unlike other Mallu movies. It focuses a lot on the style and cinematography, and has too much unbelievable action for the Mallu crowd to accept. Mohanlal walks alone into the villain’s den, shooting everyone left and right, and even though every one is shooting back at Mohanlal not a single bullet so much so as grazes him! That’s too much creative liberties to take with my sense of reality. And then there’s this great assassin who never misses a shot, and yet when he shoots Mohanlal he always misses. First he shoots one of Mohanlal’s henchmen, the other time he shoots a tree! What crap. Let Mohanlal get injured. Maybe on his left arm. Or a leg. Make it a bit difficult for the guy to beat up the bad guy.
Such scenes work in Tamil movies coz when we watch Tamil movies we suspend our sense of reality anyways. Tamil movies are movies where a skinny hero can beat dozens of baddies with easy. Tamil movies are movies where not so good looking heroes have cute and pretty heroines lusting after them. But that isn’t the case in Malayalam movies. In Malayalam, we are more pragmatic; more balanced. Someone has to die. Either the hero, or the hero’s closest friend(s). Or at least the hero’s mother. And we definitely don’t have not so good looking chaps are heroes; they are relegated to being the hero’s friend or comedian etc.
And oh, what was Bhavana’s role in this movie? Strong reporter. First she hates Sagar. Then he saves a kid and her. And then she hears some good stuff about him. And suddenly her emotions take a round-about and she starts to love him!? C’mon! She has respect for him, I can understand. After a lot of meetings she starts to love him, I can understand. But what’s this? A sudden development of feelings? So much so that even on her deathbed and when she’s unconscious she’s calling out his name.
I think Bhavana’s character is simply there so the director can arrange to have someone close to the hero killed. Like I said above, we Mallus like to have a balance. For every few baddies that get knocked off, we like to see someone from the good camp too sacrificed. So the director thought he’d introduce a woman reporter - this serves multiple purposes in that (1) the first movie too had a woman reporter to whom Sagar was close, (2) Bhavana’s good looking so we can get a song out of her, and (3) we’ll make her say she’s in love with Sagar etc so people start to think she’s close to him and then we can kill her off. No one else needs to die (except for that baldy henchman of Sagar, but that’s ok, he wasn’t close to Sagar any ways).
But. Even in spite of all the points above, I loved this movie. Amal Neerad should make more movies. Maybe not in Malayalam coz of the reasons I mentioned above, perhaps in Tamil or Hindi. (And Malayalam too, if he want’s to. I’ll definitely watch his movies!)
