Vampire Owl :: We have missed two remakes of Drishyam and might miss another one after watching this movie.
Vampire Bat :: Yes, if and only if there are no more remakes of the same movie.
Vampire Owl :: I don’t think that there will be another remake as the Bollywood version is coming this month-end.
Vampire Bat :: Yes, Bollywood is the finishing line for all copies and remakes, I guess.
Vampire Owl :: Absolutely. Wait! What is the notice that you are carrying?
Vampire Bat :: It is a mandatory statement which I recreated for this movie. It says that as we have watched the original so many times and as it is the one more related to our lifestyle, it is possible that the rating which we give here might not be suitable to be compared to the oiriginal, or with any other movie which is not a remake.
Vampire Owl :: I like that statement. With this warning, we can be sure that the brainless fan-boys won’t go psycho.
Vampire Bat :: Not just the fan-boys, but also the pseudo-intellectuals.
Vampire Owl :: Yes, the judges on the other side of the river of blood who think that they are the only intelligent people on the surface of Earth. I understand.
Vampire Bat :: The statement will work as long as they read at least the beginning and the end of this review.
[Waits in the queue].
The defence of Papanasam :: Even though I had watched all these before multiple times, I felt very good, and it is the success of Papanasam. Jeethu Jospeph once again has things running well, and we can see shots of his other movie Memories when the protagonist is thinking about saving his family – another shot is from the movie Anwar. I could actually go through that wonderful feeling that I had while watching the original without losing strength at any moment. The suspense and the thrills are abundant, and there are some beautiful shots of nature too. The story of the man who tries to save his family from breaking down after an unintentional murder committed by a member out of hopelessness, goes on to work wonders once again. I am not going to go through the story again; you can read it from my review of the original at Drishyam Movie Review. Outside the review which I wrote at that time, I don’t need to say much in defence here because the story is the biggest hero and you know that plot.
Positives and Negatives :: Papanasam happens to be a remake which had a tough task to meet the quality of that amazing original. So, what we have here is a nice achievement, but unless the remake manages to come up with something special which was not there in the original, I wouldn’t consider it as good as the original. The original felt more original to me, with no bones broken during the beatings and slightly better for me as it was less brutal, less emotional and still having the same intensity. But still, if I say that one of them is better than the other, it might not do justice, which is why I am using “me” a lot. Drishyam was better for me, and I am sure that a lot of people who have watched the original and about ninety five percent of the Malayalis will think so. But from a neutral point of view, they might be the same. I did feel that the songs were just bad though. The first half was too stretchy too. I am also personally against the title change.
Soul of the movie :: Kamal Haasan was the right choice to do the role which Mohanlal did to perfection in the original. I do wonder why there was a doubt about the same – if someone had asked me, I would have told the same much earlier, despite an initial doubt about the same. But in that case, if you ask for the same about the Bollywood version, I would have chosen Aamir Khan. But that was never to happen, and Ajay Devgan and Akshay Kumar were to be my next best choices considering the need to cater to the audience. I haven’t watched many Kamal Haasan movies in the last few years, and I am glad that this is the movie which I had chosen to spend my money for. I loved his performance the most in the last few minutes, and if someone else was chosen instead of him, that would have left me not just disappointed, but angry – I can feel that.
Performers of the soul :: There is no comparison between Mohanlal and Kamal Haasan in their roles, because they have managed things in their own ways, in such a way that fault finding is not there as a property to be taken. You know when you see class, and you know the same in both these movies. Even though Gauthami was good, Meena has a slight edge over her, when we look at it without second thoughts. Niveda Thomas is undoubtedly a step ahead of Ansiba Hassan; there was a lot of emotion and power in her portrayal of the character. It is nice to see her doing this role; this should help her a lot in the future. I haven’t found such a fine performance from a very young supporting actress for a very long time. Winner of the Kerala State Film Award for Best Child Artist in Veruthe Oru Bharya has now reached this stage.
More Performers of the soul :: Esther Anil plays the younger daughter in three out of the five versions of the movie, and here also, she is so good. Bollywood should have had her in the cast too, but I guess that they were not looking for a fine proven supporting cast, but to make use of the power of the script which is always there as the winner. Esther might be the best available child actress at this time, and it has been made clear again and again. It is time to give her even more chances. Asha Sarath maintains the same intensity, just with more emotions this time, and Anant Mahadevan also becomes more emotional character compared to the sensible and stable one played by Siddique in the original. I loved Kalabhavan Shajon’s character in the original for it was balanced, but Kalabhavan Mani is rather ruthless here and it also works. Roshan Basheer also reprises his role as the bad boy.
[After the show].
Vampire Owl :: Why were those people sitting behind us comparing Mohanlal and Kamal Haasan?
Vampire Bat :: They are just clueless. They don’t know anything. Just think about how can we compare Lord Ruthven and Lord Dracula?
Vampire Owl :: Yes, both are legendary vampires with great skills, even though we are closer to Uncle Dracula – it won’t affect the quality of the performance.
Vampire Bat :: I hope that the fans won’t find our vampire comparisons offensive though.
Vampire Owl :: I am sure that those with even a small part of the brain active won’t. This is the best comparison that we can come up with because we are vampires with root-canaled fangs.
Vampire Bat :: You can never predict the living humans. If you want to predict behaviours, go and predict that of a dead human.
Vampire Owl :: I like that idea. May be we will watch the Bollywood version too.
Vampire Bat :: We have come so far. I don’t see why not.
Vampire Owl :: I shall call the whole team for that.
Vampire Bat :: Well, do that if it is even remotely possible.
Release date: 3rd July 2015
Running time: 181 minutes
Directed by: Jeethu Joseph
Starring: Kamal Haasan, Gauthami, Niveda Thomas, Esther Anil, Kalabhavan Mani, Asha Sarath, Anant Mahadevan, M. S. Bhaskar, Roshan Basheer, Charle, Delhi Ganesh, Ilavarasu, Arul Dass, Sree Raam
@ Cemetery Watch
✠ The Vampire Bat.
When did we have so many remakes… that itself speaks a lot about the movie… next in line should be Hollywood… Arnold trying to protect his family 🙂
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Hollywood? I wouldn’t think so. They will declare the protagonist as Hannibal the Cannibal if the body is not found, and send him to the Home for the Criminally Insane 😀
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:D… Read this and let me know what you think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspect_X … I am planning to watch it
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Isn’t this the movie from which this is supposed to have been copied? 😀 I will let you watch it 😉
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Not sure… plot line looks similar… Although people gets picky about it… I feel its very healthy when people do a genuine effort and recreate the magic which is not very easy to do…
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I am looking forward to how Bollywood will recreate the same though 😀
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Might be good… its hard to mess it up
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Yes, but if they do mess it up, an award need to be provided 😀
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🙂
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Tamil version correct?… heard it is a thriller not seen anything…looks like not not much story… they do have more violence, broken bone sort of action in Tamil movies which is uncilivised. Action should be with class… Yes old Kamal would be interesting… when I saw Ghajni… I only liked the tamil version not the hindi version so much…partly the cast the guy who played ghanji in tamil was better, Amir was extremly grim and bore and charmless…but Asin was perfect for that role(: I would have got angry to see someone else play the role…so cast is soul of the movie in some cases… so I guess I should watch the original… I don’t mind watching thriller movies…kamal has my respects…because he was amazing in some totally tough movies(: Nayakan and another movie Mahanashi…but he was amazing in Nayakan…but he tends to get too emotional in emotional scenes when crying is involved… nice reveiw
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Thanks 🙂 The story is already known for most of the people with those three versions, the original and the two remakes.
You can watch this for the thrills in the script, the quality and Kamal Hassan – the movie is a sure winner in any language.
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There’s another version? I knew only about the original, this (Tamil) one and the Hindi one. Which is the fourth one?
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There are two more, Kannada and Telugu 😀
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The Telugu version even released at PVR Lulu 🙂
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So, it is not an actual remake of Drishyam? They have included elements from Anwar and memories?
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No, those are the scenes from the movies which protagonist remembers when he is thinking about ideas to save his family. There are also a few from some Tamil movies.
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Oh. was that portion there in malayalam also? I watched Drishyam from here & there 😛
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There were some other movies shown on cable tv network of the protagonist in the case of Malayalam version; can’t remember 😦
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