Movie Reviews
Aneethi Movie Review: Arjun Das, Dushara Vijayan Deliver Powerful Probing Melodrama On Inequality
About Aneethi Movie Review: Arjun Das, Dushara Vijayan Deliver Powerful Probing Melodrama On Inequality Movie
Looking forward to watching Arjun Das and Dushara Vijayan’s Aneethi? Read our review first to learn more about this gripping tale.
The silently seething protagonist, embodying all the social injustice that we turn a blind eye to every day, says at the end of the ultra-violent climax, “If someone folds his hands in front of you to ask for forgiveness, you would be a beast not to forgive.”
Thiru is a food-delivery boy for a company called Monkey Meal. He aces taunts insults and abuse from customers on a regular basis. Thiru wants them all dead.
“I have an urge to kill everybody,” he confesses to his therapist who is more amused than alarmed. We can see what the therapist can’t. Theru is ticking timebomb waiting to become an urban killing machine.
The initial scenes of growing fondness between Thiru and Subbu are deceptively gentle. A beautifully painted hand emerges from a little box in the fortress-like gate to accept the food boxes. Thiru first falls in love with the hand. The courtship is like chapters borrowed from a Mani Ratnam film.
And then, the violence sets in. To reveal the rest of the plot would not be correct. Suffice it to say that the savage violence, crime, murder, betrayal and the vengeful bloodbath that follows the romantic preamble is unexpected, but disturbingly just. When Thiru goes on a rampage against those who have wronged him the audience is given no space for mourning the loss of innocence. These people had it coming.
Social inequality grows at an alarming rate all around us. We have conveniently blinded ourselves to its ruinous ramifications. This film serves up a timely if somewhat exacerbated warning.
Many of the supporting characters in this ‘upstairs-downstairs’ take on societal insensitivity could be from Bing Joon Ho’s unforgettable but flawed South Korean film Parasite. The rich in both come across as grotesque caricatures who in some twisted way, deserve the end that they meet.
“For the rich servants are equal to thieves,” Thiru tells Subbu after their love is waylaid by the savage cruelty of fate. There is no happy ending here.Just a litter of shattered of hopes. The film ends with the fatally wounded hero cycling into a vast stretch of farmland with his dead father. It is a deeply ironic ending suggesting a utopian closure to a life that has never known any joy.
In spite of its tonal excesses, and some terribly over-heated performances by the supporting cast, Aneethi is a film that must be seen. It is about a crime we commit every single day. When have we really treated our house help as equals? Calling them a part of your family and giving them extra money to calm your conscience just won’t do. Vidya Balan discovered this recently in Jalsa. In Aneethi the rich-poor divide gets deeper, darker and more sanguinary.
Aneethi (Tamil, Streaming On Prime Video)
End of Article
Movie Reviews
Movie review: 'The Fall Guy'
‘The Fall Guy’ movie showcases a storyline focused on a stunt man, played by Ryan Gosling, trying to get back his film director ex, played by Emily Blunt. Film Critic Felix Albuerne Jr. joins LiveNOW from FOX to talk about the latest.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review | Ryan Gosling shines in sloppy slice of summer fun
Surely, Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir has had easier gigs.
Watching “The Fall Guy” — the big-screen take on the 1980s TV fave about a Hollywood stuntman who worked on the side as a bounty hunter that this week kicks off the summer movie season — you can’t help but think of its editor.
“The Fall Guy” is many things: an homage to the show; a romance; a vehicle for stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt; a large-scale action flick; and a love letter to stunt performers — those who do the dangerous work or, as the movie suggests early on, get to do “the cool stuff.”
It is big, and it is messy, but Ronaldsdóttir has helped mold it into something that, while lumpy and misshapen, is more entertaining than not.
This isn’t her first cinematic rodeo with director David Leitch, having collaborated with him on hit movies including such winners as 2017’s “Atomic Blonde” and 2018’s “Deadpool 2,” so she surely knew what she was signing up for.
It is, of course, entirely fitting that Leitch sat in the director’s chair for “The Fall Guy,” as he once was a stuntman himself. Famously, he was Brad Pitt’s stunt double on 1999’s “Fight Club.”
Here, the stuntman is Gosling’s Colt Seaver, the movie borrowing the name of Lee Majors’ hero from the TV series, which ran from 1981 to ’86.
When we meet Colt, he’s at the top of his game, specializing in being the stunt double for Hollywood megastar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Leitch’s “Bullet Train”). On the set of a big movie — Leitch and another frequent collaborator, director of photography Jonathan Sela, appear to take great pleasure in showing off the scale of such a shoot with a couple of elaborate shots — Colt is about to perform a huge fall.
On the way up to his starting point, he flirts via walkie-talkie with camera operator Jody Moreno (Blunt), the two talking about how, after the movie wraps, they could grab a couple of swimsuits — or, as a Brit such as herself would say, “swimming costumes” — hit a beach somewhere and enjoy a few margaritas, as well as the bad decisions to which they lead.
The fall goes badly.
Eighteen months later, Colt, perhaps more psychologically damaged than physically so, is out of the stunt game, making a living by parking cars for a Mexican restaurant. And, having long ago pushed away a caring Jody, he is a walking pile of regret.
When old producer friend Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham of “Ted Lasso”) calls, asking him to be a last-minute fill-in on a set in Sydney, Australia, he declines. She then tells him it’s for Jody’s directorial debut and that his old flame requested him.
He says he’ll need an aisle seat.
Upon arriving at the shoot and set to do a car stunt known as a cannon roll, he complains about the sand on which he’ll be driving on — it’s, um, not dense enough — to another old pal, stunt coordinator Dan Tucker (Winston Duke of “Black Panther”), who coaxes him into the car.
The stunt goes well, save for Colt destroying a camera tracking his car, but Jody is shocked to learn he is behind the wheel. She did NOT, in fact, request him.
Unable to kick him off the project, she instead sets him on fire repeatedly for one scene. Between these hot takes, her frustration via bullhorn over what happened in their relationship under the thinly veiled guise of talking about the lead characters in her epic science-fiction romance flick, “Metalstorm.’
At the end of the day, Colt gets into a truck, cranks a Taylor Swift song, thinks about their time together and cries — at least until Jody catches him. They talk, and while it’s clear feelings still exist between them, they agree to keep things very “profesh.”
Colt soon has bigger problems than Jody, as Gail has secretly recruited him to find the movie’s missing star, the aforementioned Tom Ryder. She convinces Colt that to save Jodie’s movie, the cops must be kept out of it, and he agrees to take on the task.
From here, “The Fall Guy” keeps things really loose, Leitch and writer Drew Pearce (“Iron Man 3,” Leitch’s “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw”) prioritizing action and gags over clear storytelling. (Hey, it’s now summer at the movies — what did you expect?)
As Colt works to uncover the mystery of Tom’s disappearance, Gosling does a lot of the heavy lifting to keep “The Fall Guy” from falling apart. He brings some leftover “Ken”-ergy from the cultural event that was last year’s “Barbie,” for which he earned a well-deserved nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He nails every important line read with great Kenfidence, er, confidence.
One of the movie’s issues is that Jody becomes a glorified background player, not the best use of the talents of Blunt, a four-time Oscar nominee including for her work in the other half 2023’s “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, “Oppenheimer.” “The Fall Guy” would have benefited from a setup that gave more time with its leads together. (One of the movie’s many meta moments has them talking via split-screen as Jody talks about its potential use in her movie, Leitch deciding to educate us on that filmmaking choice and others.)
So, OK, “The Fall Guy” leaves you wanting a bit more, but it succeeds as a two-hour excuse to shove buttery popcorn into your mouth.
And those hoping for a nod to the show beyond the initial offering of closing credits, which feature the “Unknown Stuntman” theme song from the show, should stick around for an extra treat.
Yes, “The Fall Guy” makes a bit of a mess of things, but it sure has fun doing it.
“The Fall Guy” is rated PG-13 for action and violence, drug content and some strong language. Runtime: 2 hours, 6 minutes.
Movie Reviews
The Fall Guy review: The Ryanaissance continues, while Emily Blunt shines in this screwball comedy
In cinemas; Cert 12A
Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) was the best stuntman in the business before a nasty accident derailed his career. There is always a way back and, after a tetchy film producer reaches out, Colt agrees to dust off his jumpsuit for a big-budget sci-fi epic directed by his ex-girlfriend, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).
An awkward situation, and it gets weirder: the film’s leading man, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is missing, and its producer Gail (Hannah Waddingham) thinks he may have fallen in with the wrong crowd. It’s up to Colt, then, to track him down, save the movie and win back the girl of his dreams.
Loosely inspired by the Lee Majors TV series, The Fall Guy makes a lot of noise, some of it not entirely unpleasant. Come for the fist-fights, the explosions, and the self-aware punchlines; stay for a classy screwball comedy about a broken-hearted filmmaker and her bumbling stunt performer.
The Ryanaissance continues, and Gosling is having the time of his life here. Blunt, meanwhile, is the beating heart of this daft presentation. David Leitch’s film is far too pleased with itself, but our handsome leads make it work.
Three stars
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