He makes you gawk at his age defying frame. He enthralls you with quick one liners. He plays lover to a girl, 24 years his junior and son, to actors who are his age. With Superstar Rajinikanth, anything is possible and whatever is possible is plausible. If there is one actor in India who can make you throw conventional logic out of the window, it is he. ‘Endhiran’ is Rajini 2.0. But it is more than that. It is a modern day Indian film made with local and global talent. And it gladdens the heart.
The film is about a scientist Vaseegaran who creates an android called Chitti. Chitti looks and talks like its creator. Vaseegaran is feted for his achievement but his creation is not approved by the Artificial Intelligence Research & Development Institute (AIRD) because of its inability to feel and to distinguish right from wrong. He proceeds to set that right by teaching Chitti about emotions, but finds Chitti falling in love with his girlfriend Sana.
Dr. Bohra, the head of the AIRD panel who disqualifies Chitti wants to acquire Chitti to fulfill his contract with terrorists who want android bombs instead of human bombs. The film tries to explore how Vaseegaran handles this dual problem of a robot with feelings and the threat of its power falling into wrong hands.
Shankar’s direction is in one word: outstanding. He manages to blend special effects from masters such as Industrial Light & Magic and Stan Winston Studios with an emotional storyline set in a scientific context. None of the special effects look tacky and none of the human-machine interactions seem unnatural. He could have kept the film tighter. In the second half, he could have done without one additional song to shorten the length. Rahman’s music is foot tapping and the background score matches up to the scale of the scenes superbly.
Rajini Rajini Rajini, it’s Rajini all the way. He is style personified. In this film he shows the two distinct personalities of hero and anti hero superbly. He is loving, menacing, funny, sweet, and angry and everything conceivable. A fantastic showman! Aishwarya Rai as Sana and Danny Denzongpa are totally eclipsed by the man, though Aishwarya Rai’s dancing is quite superb in the film.
In an age when Tamil superstars are afflicted with megalomania, ‘Endhiran’ shows you how to do it and yet, entertain. It is a superb cinematic experience.
