Magizh Thirumeni Archives

February 13, 2025

by Carla Hay

Ajith Kumar in “Vidaamuyarchi” (Photo courtesy of Red Giant Movies)

Directed by Magizh Thirumeni

Tamil and Azerb with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Azerbaijan and in Tbilisi, Georgia, the action film “Vidaamuyarchi” (a remake of the 1997 American film “Breakdown”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A man becomes a vigilante after his wife is kidnapped during their road trip.

Culture Audience: “Vidaamuyarchi” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and superhero movies that are utterly formulaic.

Arjun Sarja in “Vidaamuyarchi” (Photo courtesy of Red Giant Movies)

“Vidaamuyarchi” is like a vehicle stuck in the mud and spinning its wheels. This bloated 150-minute action flick (about a vigilante looking for his kidnapped wife) has choppy editing, hokey acting and phony-looking fight scenes. If you want to watch a movie that thinks “loud and messy” means “suspenseful and compelling,” then “Vidaamuyarchi” is the movie for you. Everyone else should steer clear.

Written and directed by Magizh Thirumeni, “Vidaamuyarchi” is a remake of the 1997 American film “Breakdown,” starring Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh and Kathleen Quinlan. “Vidaamuyarchi” (which means “perseverance” in Tamil) is unnecessarily in non-chronological order, which makes the timeline more jumbled than it needed to be. A lot of superfluous flashbacks detour the basic gist of the story.

In “Vidaamuyarchi,” wealthy businessman Arjun (played by Ajith Kumar) and his wife
Kayal (played by Trisha Krishnan) are a Tamil-speaking Indian couple who have been married for 12 years when she asks for a divorce. Flashbacks show how Arjun and Kayal met while they were both at a vacation resort in Tbilisi, Georgia, which is Kayal’s hometown. There was an immediate attraction between Arjun and Kayal.

Shortly after Arjun and Kayal met, his job transferred him to Baku, Azerbaijan. Arjun and Kayal continued to keep in touch and had a long-distance relationship. When he proposed marriage to her, she immediately accepted and moved to Baku after they got married. Their courtship is as corny as it can be, like a poorly written romance novel.

In an early flashback scene in the movie, not long after Arjun and Kayal met at the vacation resort, Arjun climbs up a resort building to get to the high-rise balcony attached to the room where Kayal is staying. Arjun makes this unannounced visit at approximately 2 a.m. (Can you say “stalker”?)

When Kayal asks Arjun why he didn’t just take an elevator, he says he wanted to impress her by climbing up to the balcony. He then proposes marriage to her and gives her an engagement ring. Arjun and Kayal have a lavish wedding attended by family members and friends.

Another flashback shows that about three years into their marriage, Kayal had a miscarriage and found out she could no longer conceive children. This infertility issue puts a strain on her marriage to Arjun because Kayal becomes more emotionally distant from him. Shortly before she asks for the divorce, Kayal confesses to Arjun that she had an affair with another man, but the affair is over.

Arjun doesn’t want to get divorced because he still loves Kayal, but she’s made up her mind to divorce Arjun because she says she’s no longer happy in the marriage. Kayal tells Arjun that she is going to temporarily live with her parents in Tbilisi. Arjun offers to drive her there. The drive from Baku to Tibilisi is about 356 miles or 574 kilometers. It would take about seven hours to get there by car.

Most of “Vidaamuyarchi” takes place on a remote desert expressway in Azerbaijan. The first indication that this will be a hellish road trip is when a Hummer nearly drives Arjun nd Kayal off of the road. The Hummer’s driver is a stranger in his late 20s or early 30s named Michael (played by Arav), who gives Arju and Kayal a creepy grin, flips his middle finger at the couple, and drives away. There are no other vehicles on the road during this near-collision.

At a gas station convenience store, Kayal meets a seemingly friendly married Indian couple named Rakshith (played by Arjun Sarja) and Deepika (played by Regina Cassandra), who both strike up a conversation with Kayal because they all speak Tamil. Deepika says that Rakshith is an architect who used to work for the financial company Morgan Stanley. Arjun is outside getting gas for the car when Michael and his Hummer drive up to the gas station. This time, Michael has about four male companions with him.

Michael and Arjun have a verbal confrontation. It looks like it will turn into a physical brawl until one of Michael’s friends tells Michael that they need to leave. Michael and his pals drive off in the Hummer. But will this be the last time that they’re seen in the movie? Of course not.

Not long after this conflict, there’s another problem: Arjun’s car breaks down on the road. Michael and his hoodlum cronies come back in the Hummer. Michael throws a beer bottle near the couple. It looks like another confrontation is going to happen.

But guess who comes to the “rescue”: Rakshith and Deepika, who are in a large freight truck. Rakshith and Deepika show up while Arjun and Kayal are stranded with these thugs, who quickly drive away when they see that help has arrived.

Why would an architect need to be driving a freight truck? It’s a question that a trusting Arjun and Kayal don’t bother ask. The immediate trust that Arjun and Kayal give to these two strangers will turn out to be a dangerous mistake.

Arjun and Kayal don’t know the area very well. Rakshith and Deepika say that the nearest mechanic is about 60 miles (96 kilometers) away. Their cell phones can’t get any signals, so Rakshith and Deepika offer to take Kayal to a restaurant/bar called Jabbar’s Cafe, which has a landline phone that they can use to call to get the car towed. It’s an offer that Arjun and Kayal eagerly accept.

Arjun and Kayal don’t ask for details, such as the name or address of the mechanic. The plan is for Arjun to stay with the car and wait for it to be towed. After the car is towed, the plan is for Rakshith and Deepika to give Arjun a ride to Jabbar’s Cafe, where Kayal is supposed to be waiting for him. Things don’t go according to this plan.

After Rakshith and Deepika and Kayal leave, Arjun is able to start his car. He still waits for Rakshith and Deepika. Even if his cell phone got a signal. Arju foolishly never asked for Rakshith’s or Deepika’s phone number. After waiting for quite some time, Arjun doesn’t see a tow truck, Rakshith or Deepika. Arjun figures out that something is very wrong.

Arjun frantically drives around until he finds his way to Jabbar’s Cafe and doesn’t see Kayal anywhere in or near the place. Arjun begs Jabbar the owner/manager (played by Kazim Abdullayev) to ask the customers if they have seen Kayal. (Arjun has a photo of her on his phone.) No one claims to have seen Kayal, except for a drunk woman at the bar, who says, “Your wife eloped with a truck driver.”

Most of the rest of the movie is about Arjun trying to find Kayal. Arjun has contact with local law enforcement to report the kidnapping and to seek help for Arjun with his search. But for reasons what won’t be revealed in this review, things go horribly wrong for Arjun. He has a misunderstanding encounter with a police officer (played by Javanshir Hadiyev), who ends up thinking that Arju is a mentally ill liar.

Michael and his thug pals come back into the picture, of course. Rakshith and Deepika are also seen again. It’s eventually revealed what happened to Kayal. “Vidaamuyarchi” has such an incoherent and idiotic way of getting to the story’s conclusion (none of it is believable), the only good thing that will result from reaching the end of this movie is that your senses will no longer have to endure this onslaught of annoying cinematic garbage.

Red Giant Movies released “Vidaamuyarchi” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on February 6, 2025.

December 7, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Kalaga Thalaivan”

Directed by Magizh Thirumeni

Tamil with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in India, the action film “Kalaga Thalaivan” features an all-Indian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A corporate “fixer”/assassin targets a suspected whistleblower who’s been leaking secrets about a truck-manufacturing company involved in illegal environmental pollution.

Culture Audience: “Kalaga Thalaivan” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching lengthy action thrillers that are a jumble of stereotypes and predictable plot developments.

Arav in “Kalaga Thalaivan” (Photo courtesy of Red Giant Movies)

“Kalaga Thalaivan” makes some effort to be better than the average action flick with its plot about corporate corruption and a whistleblower investigation. But the movie isn’t very imaginative and ends up falling short because it relies too much on clichés. There’s nothing in this movie that is truly surprising. The acting is mediocre-to-bad, while the fight scenes are often very unrealistic.

Written and directed by Magizh Thirumeni, “Kalaga Thalaivan” (which means “leader of rebellion” in Tamil) is essentially a long, drawn-out chase movie where it’s easy to know within the first 20 minutes how everything is going to end. “Kalaga Thalaivan” is yet one of many action films that get churned out and follow many of the same formulas. What makes it worse is when this type of movie is dragged out for more than two hours (“Kalaga Thalaivan” is 141 minutes), with much of the movie bloated by meaningless filler scenes.

In the beginning of “Kalaga Thalaivan,” which takes place in various cities in India, the Vahjra truck-manufacturing company has been having tremendous success because of a new line of trucks that the company has been touting as energy-efficient and environmentally responsible. The reality is that the trucks cause a lot of dmaging pollution. Executives at Vahjra obviously want to keep this pollution scandal a secret.

An unidentified person leaks this secret to the media, so Vahjra is now under investigation for violations of environmental regulations. Vahjra’s chief executive hires a “fixer” named Arjun (played by Arav), who describes himself as a private investigator/assassin, to find out who leaked this inside information. Because the whistleblower is suspected to be an empoylee, Arjun gets a list of manager-level employees who know this iinsie information, he goes to their homes, and severely beats them to try to get confessions out of them.

All of the employees except one insist that they didn’t leak any of the company’s information. One of the employees who gets assaulted—a regional manager named Keshav Rao—confesses that he was paid to leave the information in a pen-shaped flash drive in a designated place on the train. Arjun now knows that the effort to take down Vahjra could be part of a conspiracy, not just a lone whistleblower. He’s determined to find out who is the mastermind.

As example of how vicious Arjun is, he and a crony named Raju (played by Aarav) got Keshav’s confession by tracking down Keshav’s daughter (played by Dharanie) on a restaurant date with her boyfriend (played by Rakshith), throwing acid on the boyfriend’s face, and then going back to Keshav and saying that Keshav’s daughter would be next to be maimed by acid unless Keshav confessed. Keshav names another Vahjra employee named Jai Prakash (played by Jeeva Ravi), a Chennai section chief for the company. That’s how Arjun finds out that all the Vahjra employees that he beat up and interrogated were employees who were demoted, which might give them a motive to get revenge on the company.

Because it’s already been revealed in the trailers for “Kalaga Thalaivan,” the mastermind whistleblower is a Vahjra employee named Thirumaaran (played by Udhayanidhi Stalin), who goes by the nickname Thiru. Arjun not only has to track down Thiru but he also has to get proof that Thiru is the mastermind. It takes an awfully long time to get to this point where Thiru’s whistleblower identity is discovered by Arjun. If that information hadn’t already been revealed in the movie’s trailers. viewers would have more suspense in watching “Kalaga Thalaivan,” which is a repetitive movie that isn’t nearly as clever as the movie thinks it is.

Adding to the clichés, “Kalaga Thalaivan” has a lukewarm romance that plays out in the movie exactly like you think it will. In between life-threatening fights and hiding out like a fugitive, Thiru has time to romance a pretty woman named Mythili (also spelled Maithili) Prasad (played by Nidhhi Agerwal), who already has a boyfriend (played by Pradeep) in a serious relationship, and she wants to keep Thiru in the “friend zone.”

This is an example of a cringeworthy pickup line that Thiru uses on Mythili: “You can tell a lot about a woman’s personality by her handbag.” Thiru is persistent in courting her, and you can figure out the rest. Of course, Mythili finds out the hard way that Thiru has an assassin after him. She finds out in a very predictable sequence that happens later in the movie.

Thiru has two people as his main accomplices in helping him evade the revenge actions of Arjun. Thiru has a best friend named Ghandi (played by Kalaiyarasan), who is a stereotypical sidekick of the movie’s hero: goofy, sometimes awkward, and serving in the role of bringing some comic relief. Arjun’s other accomplice is his adoptive mother Bharati (played by Anupama Kumar), who advises him to disappear and start a new life.

In between the silly action scenes (where people don’t get injuries that would cause broken bones in real life), there’s some computer hacking, more melodrama in the Thiru/Mythili romance, and a storyline that stretches over eight years. Some of the movie’s cinematography is well-done in capturing the energy of the action sequences. However, the film editing is so choppy, it lowers the quality of “Kalaga Thalaivan,” which wasn’t a high-quality movie in the first place.

All of the movie’s characters are hollow stereotypes, with nothing distinctive about the cast members’ acting performances. Stalin, who has another career as a politician, is one of this movie’s producers, which explains why he’s miscast as the movie’s action hero. He never looks very convincing in the fight scenes where there are obvious stunt doubles. The only mystery in this long-winded wannabe thriller is why Thiru wanted to mastermind this whistleblowing scheme. When that motive is revealed, it’s not that surprising, and it’s actually very underwhelming—much like this entire, forgettable movie.

Red Giant Movies released “Kalaga Thalaivan” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on November 18, 2022.

Tag: Magizh Thirumeni

Review: ‘Vidaamuyarchi,’ starring Ajith Kumar, Arjun Sarja, Trisha Krishnan, Regina Cassandra and Arav

Review: ‘Kalaga Thalaivan,’ starring Udhayanidhi Stalin, Nidhhi Agerwal, Kalaiyarasan and Arav