Anniyan
Language - Tamil
Director – Shankar
*ing – Vikram, Sada, Prakashraj & Vivek
Music – Harris Jayaraj

Anniyan is the latest offering from director Shankar, who has previously made Gentleman, Mudhalvan, Indian & Boys.  A lot of expectations were riding on this film as Shankar’s previous outing – Boys was not very successful at the box-office.  This was also the first teaming of the latest “superstar actor” Vikram with Shankar.  

Boys (Shankar’s previous outing) was an attempt to try a different genre of movie making.  With Anniyan, Shankar seems to return to the genre he is most comfortable in i.e., action with a message. Ramanujam (aka Ambi), our protagonist, is a righteous citizen and believes in upholding the law.  He is a God fearing Brahmin who is a consumer advocate lawyer and believes that every citizen is responsible for his or her civic duty.  He believes in the system and is not afraid to speak out when he sees people misusing the system.  Unfortunately, he is always perceived as being a trouble maker and people don’t take him seriously.  He is also in love with his neighbor Nandini (Sada), who considers him a bore.  

Enter Anniyan – an avenging angel who has a website where people can tell him about their troubles.  Ramanujam does just that and Anniyan starts to eliminate the people that Ramanujam identifies as being incompetent in performing the public and civic duties.  Anniyan uses very unique and barbaric ways to bring the guilty to justice.  

Ramanujam proposes his love to Nandini who outright rejects him.  At this point enters Remo, a pop star who completely sweeps Nandini off her feet.  As the movie progresses, you realize that these characters Anniyan & Remo are mere multiple personalities of Ramanujam.  

The movie has a quite a bit of hang over from Indian and the message is almost as preachy as Mudhalvan.  But, Shankar is very comfortable with this genre and it shows through in every frame.  The special effects and visuals are splendid and the movie keeps you engrossed most of the time.  However, the piece-de-resistance of this film is its hero – Vikram.  Handing multiple personalities is not easy, but Vikram does it with grace and ease that one hasn’t witnessed on the screen for quite sometime.  His transitions from one character to another are superb.  The music was okay – nothing out of the ordinary.  On the whole, it was a relatively decent movie worth a watch once for Vikram’s performance.

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