Prashanth, the man brought up with a silver spoon during his teenage years in terms of cinema expertise as his father Thyagarajan gave him all he needed to become a movie star. Dance classes, martial arts, gymnastics, fencing, horse-riding, and etc etc. Of course Prashanth had a brilliant opening with Vaigasi Poranthachu and subsequently delivered hit movies and that too under distinguished directors like Mani Rathnam, Balu Mahendra and K.Balachandar as well. After a lull period he came back with a massive hit in Jeans under Shankar's direction earning credits for his complicating double role performance as Visu and Ramu. Things were expected to look good for him but nearly 25 films after Jeans, sadly only a couple of them were good movies. For a star who has worked with big directors and good talents, he came up with countless of useless films and to make situation worse he had a torrid personal life as well. After 5 years, he's making a comeback with this big budget film Ponnar Shankar which raised some eyebrows with the trailer.
There was a great deal of expectations on the film with Prashanth donning double roles once again and plus a big star cast which includes, Jeyaram, Prakash Raj, Nasser, Napoleon, Raj Kiran, Prabhu, Khusboo, Sneha, Riyaz Khan, Vijayakumar , Ponvannan, Delhi Ganesh, Ponnambalam, Seetha, Sukumari, Santhana Bharathi, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan, Bose Venkat, and etc. With such a cast, audiences will expect a power packed performance from all but most of the characterizations were weak and don't really leave any deep impact with the viewers. Should say almost, all of the talented performers were wasted. Prashanth, showed all his extra skills and was apt for the roles of Ponnar and Shankar but he has very less dialogues to speak. Besides that the only artistes who were given scope to do some commendable acting were Nasser and Raj Kiran. Nasser oozes confidence and utters each dialogue with utmost care which shows the amount of experience he has. Raj Kiran delivered some power packed expressions which was luckily not over the top. Rest of the cast only has a few scenes between themselves just to carry the story further. Heroines, Divya Parameshwar and Pooja Chopra were just there for bringing 'colors & freshness' to the scenes (though we should be very jealous of Prashanth for being extremely lucky with heroines throughout his career having had plenty of good looking Mumbai heroines; and the two heroines in this film were former final round participants of Miss India).
Technically the movie was OK and art director Muthuraj should be appreciated for creating so many wonderful sets although films nowadays deliver even more realistic settings. Still he should be given a round of applause for a great job especially for the royal courtroom, song sets (the first song) and war zone sequences. Shaji's camera is adequate with some good aerial shots and slow motion capture (especially the solo song of the heroines). Don Max did well with the editing and stunts by Kanal Kannan and Ravi from Mumbai is OK except for some over-the-top flying and jumping which could have been done better and so too the graphics which was under the supervision of Prashanth. The big disappointment was Isaignani Ilaiyaraja. None of the songs sticks to our mind and the re-recording is just so and so. A huge letdown from the maestro
Coming to the captain, Thyagarajan should be appreciated for putting this film together considering the logistical nightmare of handling so many people in the film as thousands of them were involved in the fight and dance sequences. No matter how grandeur the film is, the script and screenplay is the main point of any film and Kalaingar's script is not powerful and should say quite weak. It doesn't leave any impact on the viewers which is a negative aspect considering that this is a historical script. Dialogues are very simple and direct but doesn't match with the story as most of it sounds very contemporary which won't gel well with historical stories.
Final verdict, it's a good attempt in Tamizh cinema but not quality enough in terms of a solid and powerful package though all of them should be appreciated for trying out something honestly.
BY:TAMIL
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