Really, an engaging piece of cinema. But what was Taapsee Pannu – as an East Pakistani refugee rescued by Varma from the high seas — doing in the movie? Totally wasted after her performance in Pink. The rather poor dubbing is another minus point. But on the whole Ghazi is gripping.

However, the Sathya-Mani romance is silly to the core, and drags the narrative down by several notches, though uniformly fine performances by Menen, Samantha and Suriya come as magic relief.

While Prakash Raj outshines Irani in the Hindi version with his extraordinarily power-packed dialogue delivery, which greatly enlivens the dramatic events in court, Stalin is no match for Warsi, whose bumbling, dream-driven guy in a black jacket was such a pleasure to watch. And, Radharavi too pales in comparison to Shukla, whose characterisation of a bored judge was so nuanced with hitherto unseen mannerisms that I was floored.

In the ultimate analysis, Brown’s work may seem more like a piece of exotica — and this was exactly how Ramanujan was treated by students and professors at Cambridge.

Bhaskar affirms this with a rare power and simplicity — a yawning difference from the parts she played as a modern woman in the Tanu Weds Manu series. As is often believed in Bollywood, an actor must be able to let go his/her own self and sink into a character and she does.

Sadly, the movie ceases to tread a focussed path — often wandering without purpose. It begins with Pugazh and his team winning a cricket match on the playground, and they travel to Puducherry (Pondicherry) to celebrate with a song and dance on the beach — which kind of transforms into a Baywatch locale with bikini-clad foreign women parading up and down.

Like so many Tamil films, Kanithan begins with a fantastic idea and story, but Santosh lets these spin out of control — till the script sinks beyond salvation.

Despite these little pools of teardrops, Bhaskar manages to keep his movie floating on a cloud of joy de vivre. The cousins have a rollicking time in Bangalore — often forgetting their other relationships. A few twists (predictable though) later, the ends are neatly tied up, though Kanan’s life appears a trifle stretched and hurried, much like in the case of Menon’s version.

Thoongaavanam is eminently watchable, even if that means keeping awake for a late night show.

At 157 minutes, Vedalam is but an Ajith Kumar show (all the way where Menon and Haasan are wasted). The man arrives with a big bang and never tires of bashing up baddies — but now and then taking a break to cleanse society of minor evils like fooling law courts or cheating on wives.
Certainly not for children, who might wonder how Phantom sprung out of their favourite comic books in such a horrifically mutated form.