Annaatthe Movie Review

When the official announcement was out that Superstar Rajinikanth’s next would be directed by Siruthai Siva, the excitements were beyond regular enthralments. The reason being the erstwhile movies of Rajinikanth, where the directors just recreated his 90s-image without concentrating on the story nor portraying him in a perfect commercial hero mode. What should have been a Diwali 2020 release nearly got its push for a year due to the pandemic issues. Finally, the movie hits screens worldwide today, but does the Rajinikanth-Siva duo gratify the expectations of audiences?

Rajinikanth has been a dotting brother to his younger sister Keerthy Suresh. However, when he fixes her marriage, she shocks everyone by eloping to Kolkata with her boyfriend. Few months later, brother realizes that his loveable sister is in trouble in Kolkata, and he lands there to settle the scores with troublemakers.

It looks like most of the Tamil moviemakers addicted to a mania of impressing the Telugu audiences. Director Siva is no exception. Well, his previous movies have been pure commercial entertainers, which had a time-worn plot, but still worked the magic out excellently upon his target audiences. However, with Annaatthe, he registers that he needs a break to rework on his storytelling pattern. What became an instant attraction with the trailer of Annaatthe was the star-cast ranging from Prakash Raj, Kushboo Sundar, Meena, Nayanthara, Pandiarajan, Livingston and many more. Disappointingly, they appear merely as cameo artistes, and have been used to just drag the story. Delete their scenes, and it doesn’t affect the screenplay or story. Although first half doesn’t have a story, the crowded ambience with the star-cast somehow manages to keep us engrossed, but the scenario gets adverse with the second half. When the intermission gives a strong impression that Rajinikanth’s action and mass avatar is going to be terrific, Siva fails to impress us. As usual, Nayanthara does nothing as in other lead hero movies. Keerthy Suresh appears with more prominence next to Rajinikanth. Of course, her performance is good. Prakash Raj is wasted. Abhimanyu Singh and Jagapathi Babu as villains add no intensity to the movie.

D Imman religiously favours Superstar fans with his score. Be it mass BGM or melodious ones, he is good.

Director Siva needs to pull up his socks now. Annaatthe struggles to move forward in many places with a running length that is almost 2 hours 40 minutes, it hardly has the scenes for Rajinikanth fans.