Review: 'Bairavaa' is a long and laborious film, but at least its heroine is a surprise

The least Bharathan could have done after getting Vijay on board for the second time was to come up with an intelligent plot.
Review: 'Bairavaa' is a long and laborious film, but at least its heroine is a surprise
Review: 'Bairavaa' is a long and laborious film, but at least its heroine is a surprise
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After the Azhagiya Thamizh Magan fiasco, director Bharathan apparently wanted to make it up to Vijay when he signed him on for Bairavaa. All I got from the film, though, was this: Never take loans from ICICI Bank...oops ICCI Bank.

The rest is a long winded, never-ending mess that involves people falling dead like flies, "karuthu" messages from the Ilayathalapathy and some half-hearted comedy from Sathish, M Rajendran, and Thambi Ramaiah.

In between, we're supposed to mull over this question - is Vijay as Bairavaa a man, or is he Lord Bairavaa himself? I don't know the English equivalent of the Tamil colloquialism 'romba overu', so I'll just go with the original.

Bairavaa is an orphan who works as a debt collection agent in a bank. He's a tie wearing thug, in other words. He meets Malarvizhi (Keerthy Suresh) at a wedding and falls for her. But powerful people are watching over the woman and he jumps right into their field of vision. 

King Goon PK (Jagapathy Babu) and his minions do the usual brain dead things that goons do in Tamil cinema. However, Daniel Balaji, as the second-in-command goon, and his ailing wife provide some moments of black humour. 

Malarvizhi comes as a surprise. After playing one too many roles that required her to pretend that she was an overgrown toddler, Keerthy gets to play a medical student who is bold enough to stand up for justice. She does well even if her mission is hijacked along the way by the man/god Bairavaa. 

Vijay is a director's actor and though he dances and flings around punchlines every two minutes, it's simply not enough. Having got him on board, the least Bharathan could have done is to come up with a plot resembling intelligence. And what's with that brown wig?! Bharathan has tried to incorporate real life issues relating to educational institutions and their scams. But much of this gets lost in the melee to prove who is the aambalai and who is not (yawn). So, it's hard to take the attempt seriously.

Neither Santhosh Narayanan's music nor Sukumar's cinematography are anything to write home about. The editing is choppy in parts, too. 

Bairavaa is a long, laborious and lazy film and the blame for that lies squarely with Bharathan. Nitrous oxide or laughing gas plays an important role in the film and if you want to remain entertained to the end, you may want to take your own cylinder with you.

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