Spyder Review

01/10/2017

01/CR/Tamil-Telugu

Spyder is a big budget Tamil-Telugu bilingual movie directed by A. R. Murugadoss after Akira (*ing Sonakshi Sinha) and Tamil Movie Kaththi (*ing Ilaya Thalapathy Vijay), starring Telugu Super Star Mahesh Babu, S. J. Surya and Rakul Preet Singh. After 2012, Murugadoss teams up with the music director Harris Jayaraj and ace cinematographer Santosh Sivan after Thuppakki was one of the major highlights to expect for a moviebuff.

Plot:
* Shiva is an Intelligence Bureau officer. He has developed a software to trace the calls of people who faces any danger or help situation. When he was leading a peaceful and satisfied life, a murder of a girl and a woman police officer changes his whole life. He then later came to know that the murderer was a psycho serial killer. Here begins the cat and mouse game.

Performance:
* Mahesh Babu as Shiva is apt for the role. He did a subtle performance in this movie in both the languages. He dubbed himself for the Tamil Version. Don't expect this movie to be a typical Mahesh Babu's mass masala entertainer. He has few mass and class scenes but not like his previous flicks like BusinessMan, Srimanthudu, Dookudu, 1:Nenokkadine, and more.

* S. J. Surya as the antagonist was the best performance in this film. He portrayed villainism well in every frame and he steal the show especially his act in interval block was the best way he emoted his antagonism. The child who played the childhood of the antagonist was also awesome. He too, emotes the antagonism well.

* Rakul Preet Singh was charm only the screen but she hasn't have any meaty roles to do. He was just a regular heroine who have to crack silly jokes, romance hero and dance with him. That's all. Nothing much to do for her.

# Other actors did justification to their roles like Bharath, R J Balaji, etc.

Technical Aspects:
* Written and Directed by - A. R. Murugadoss. One who had watched his previous films knows his movie treatment. His movies are complete entertainer and will be included a social message for the people. Here, in this case, the treatment of Spyder is the same. He has done equal dosage of every genres. But his screenplay was a bit weak. Unnecessary placements of songs was a negative point and sometimes the narrative pace went down. Somehow he managed to retrieve the pace. That's evident in this movie.

* DOP by the legend Santosh Sivan after Anjaan, Inam and Thuppakki (Murugadoss directorial) was fine. There were regular shots as well as fresh shots but this was not his best comparing to his previous works. I felt personally that he could have done even more better.

# Editing was done by A. Sreekar Prasad. He did his part well and could have been edited few scenes.

# Music by Harris Jayaraj was the negative part in this film. He did 5 songs in Tamil and 6 in Telugu. The theme song and the intro song was fine and rest of the songs wasn't good. His BGM was also not upto the mark. The title music and few background scores were like an imitation of the background scores of his previous work with Murugadoss in the Tamil Movie Thuppakki (2012).

# Stunts done by Peter Hein wasn't his best work. This was his first work after receiving National Award for the stunts in the Malayalam Movie, Pulimurugan (2016). Stunts were designed according to Telugu Mass Masala entertainer. Usually Murugadoss directorial films do have interesting action blocks like Coin Fight in Kaththi film, Saving hostages from sleeper cells terrorists in Thuppakki film are few examples.

# VFX also was a letdown in this film but that can't be judged because usually big budget Indian movies lacks grand VFX scales and expert in minimal CGIs only. But now it's improving.

# Other departments did their part well.

Final Word: Watch Spyder only for Mahesh Babu and S J Surya. You will definitely like the antagonist than the protagonist.

#avmoviebuff