Vidaamuyarchi: Ajith-Trisha Thriller Doesn’t Fully Commit To Its Genre

MAGIZH THIRUMENI’s Vidaamuyarchi, starring Ajith Kumar, Trisha Krishnan, Arjun Sarja and Regina Cassandra, adapts from Jonathan Mostow’s 1997 film Breakdown. The premise and several plot events are similar, but Magizh’s additions and adornments do stand out as one would expect in an Indian version with a huge star in the lead. Just look at the length of both the films: Breakdown clocks at a crisp 93 minutes. Vidaamuyarchi is 150 minutes. Make of that what you will.

This film places itself in the highways, cafes and rest stops of Azerbaijan with Ajith’s Arjun living in Baku with his wife Kayal (Trisha). Their relationship is 12 years old, and we get some quick flashbacks, choppily written, to establish history. Magizh wants to present an adult relationship, something his mentor Gautham Vasudev Menon managed to do in Yennai Arindhaal with the same actors. It works to an extent in the present-day portions when the relationship is crumbling, they deal with slow erosion like mature individuals. But in the flashback, it is unwieldy. The dialogues don’t pop the way adult romantic lines should; it is edited to be concise, but the pattern is shoddy, the cadence is off, and it is clear that the actors are working with mediocre material.

Thankfully, this is not stretched. We are quick to return to the road film that Vidaamuyarchi wants to be. It is a genre film. A road action thriller where the thrills need to be earned. The film does a commendable job of establishing terrain as well as characters. We know what kind of people Arjun and Kayal are. They are soft, they are strictly a regular family — that, if not for a miscarriage, would be three in number. It’s a tragic event that probably strained their relationship over the years but, as adults, we don’t need to see it to get that. They are so soft that one confesses about an affair and the response is to let it go and move on towards formal separation. There isn’t even a raised voice.

And Ajith doesn’t raise as much as a fist till about 90 minutes into the film. Vidaamuyarchi is true enough to its genre to pull back the heroism for as long as possible. The film could well have been set in India, but the language and cultural disparity creates some memorable moments in the first half. The reason to set it in Azerbaijan has its merits — the landscape is fresh to the Indian palate and lends itself to heated moments, the unfamiliarity breeds doubt and skepticism, giving way to lack of trust between people. They are the main reasons for some of the joys in the patchy first half. The treatment reflects the sober, noiseless surroundings.

But there is flab in the form of flashbacks and in the form of backstories. It is well and good to have your hero hold back but others need to pull their weight to make the film engaging. It remains sober for too long, for a long time nothing really happens, and it is a long wait to open the bottle. There is a reason Breakdown is only 90-odd minutes. And the two hours and 30 minutes of Vidaamuyarchi start to show when we think of some unnecessary romance scenes and comical back stories for Rakshith (Arjun Sarja) and Deepika (Regina Cassandra).

While Magizh remains steadfast in giving a no-frills Ajith, he doesn’t commit to the genre. In fact, a full commitment would turn this into a wildly different film. The beats of this genre lie in the slasher. In fact, the film teases that territory late in the second half where most of the action works. The first action sequence inside a Hummer is well done and the subsequent portions inside a local man’s house also brings it down. What exposes this lack of commitment is Anirudh’s score. A better filmmaker would demand more silence and trust his visuals. The thrill rests in the journey, territory and choreography. Not with the noise of the engine.