Movie Reviews
Akku.

Mar 5, 2008, 14:45

Cast: Ajay, Sriji, Anu Haasan, Riyaz Khan, Rakshai

Direction: Maamani

Music: Sri Ram

A bomb is strapped to the hero’s shoe. The terrorist then dumps the hero right in the middle of Chennai city, and asks him to start running. If he stops running, or even slows down, it will explode. This is the simple but chilling premise of this 90 minute Tamil thriler without songs and without an interval. Directed by Maamani (making his debut), Akku is the first true thriller in Tamil cinema. Even if the movie does not work always, the courage and inventiness to breakaway from the song-dance formula is heroic in itself, winning Akku high marks for pushing the envelope of innovative, risk-taking contemporary Kollywood cinema even further.
 
Akku’s new hero and heroine are Ajay and Sriji. Very much in love, they plan to elope. The heroine’s brother (Rakshai), a terrorist, grabs the hero, plants a shoe-bomb on him, takes him to the heart of the city, and abandons him. This is no small bomb but made from uranium, and if Ajay stops running the city will explode. An Assistant Police Commisioner(Riyaz Khan) and a bomb diffusing expert (Anu Hassan) are called in to find a solution. Can they come up with an answer and save the city? And how long can the hero keep running before he collapses?

The movie references are obvious – from Speed to Phone Booth to Cellular (and a little bit of Run Lola Run?) – but Maamani makes the movie his own with enough original thrills in the plot that are not derived from other movies. The action sequecnes are handled with aplomb. Everything that happens, happens while Ajay is running, making Akku feel like a Hollywood thriller: the police keep him supplied with oxygen, steroids and even scan his shoe to find out what kind of bomb he’s carrying .
 
 

Chittibabu’s camerawork is exceptional, as it weaves through the city shooting the running hero. Riyaz Khan and Anu Hassan, who do fine work here, are the only known names in Akku – the others, including the crew, are new, and very talented. The new couple, Ajay and Sriji, are impressive in their debut. Rakshai playing the villain (apparently a rank holder in biochemistry) is especially effective. Also worth mentioning are the crew: Venkatesh’s dexterous editing and Sriram’s background music score (which has to cue the audience on what to feel at different moments) is evocative.

In a Wikipedia interview the scriptwriter-director Maamani said, “Since I did not want the screenplay to slow down, I decided not to have an interval.” For this thriller to really work effectively, and to make the audience feel the heat of time running out, it will have to play without an interval. Let’s hope that theatres everywhere realize how crucial this is to Akku’s time-bomb-ticking-plot and run it without the interval. There are some holes in the plot, the  
 
 
acting is uneven (since it involves so many novices) and the climax goes a little wrong. But these are minor flaws in an otherwise deftly concieved and shot thriiler. Akku could blaze a new trend in Kollywood of taut genre thrillers, minus songs and dances. Perhaps with a bigger budget and stars it would have been a mega hit, but even as it stands, it deserves to be a hit.