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Sachein – Smoke Robot

Sachein was horrendous. When the movie was announced, from the posters, I sensed that it was a going to be a 3 hour long advertisement like Minsara Kanavu. It ended up just as expected and was also hugely non-interesting. Yet another good example of how a movie can bore you to the core because of bad/no screenplay.

With the screenplay nearly non-existing and the ghost of ‘Khushi’ wavering around, one couldn’t expect much than this. Though the characters talk naturally like the college crowd, it’s the characterisation and the predictable story that’s irritating. The movie seems better as it nears the end, or probably I felt happy as it was about to end. Why whould someone want to direct his debut movie which is a out-right rehash of a earlier movie done by the same star ? That just says how the producer and the director ‘believes’ a tamil movie fan. Forget Johan, the debutant director doing the mistake. Imagine Vijay himself, who wants to do Kushi again. Clearly shows how Vijay cares-a-damn about his audience and his belief that his fan following would make this movie a super-hit.

While Vijay, like other characters in movie, starts artificially, he goes on to carry the light-weight movie upon him to the end. Vijay has a long way to go in acquiring dialogue delivery skills. As he starts to talk at the camera after every 5 minutes, it seems like a movie shot strictly for his fans. I couldn’t believe Harini can act so bad. While she did a good debut in Boys, she is intolerable with her performance. Her inspirations drawn from the well-performed Jyothika hasn’t helped at all. Bipasha Basu could very well stay polluting the bollywood with her vamp looks. The bloated Vadivelu with his paunch and overdone powder makeup, seems out-of-place.

In a movie, where everthing except photography[Jeeva] is overdone, the smoke machine operator walks away with the credit for the ‘best overdone component’ of the movie. As every single character walks into/out-of a room/scene, the smoke seems to follow them sacredly. This starts to irritate right from the first shot when Vijay walks into the airport. With two ghanna songs asking to tap foot, I’m still googling for the BGMs.

Though it was partly my mistake to expect Johan to perform like his father, Mahendran, his story/screenplay has been the biggest villain. Lastly, if only Vijay wants to take over kollywood by talking to the camera and by rehashing his older flicks with newer heroines, he is having a bad dream.

P.S : Johan has a long way to go before he could be compared on the sames lines as his dad. Being an avid Mahendran fan, I only hope Johan ‘delivers’ a good show, next time.

subbudu

48 responses to “Sachein – Smoke Robot”

  1. Though i am not a Die-hard Vijay Fan, I didnt find Sachein so bad compared to CM/ME..

    it was entertaining (even though with silly comedies)… and atleast this screenplay was continous, the continuity can be grasped better.. compared to a lot of loopholes in CM where saravanan appears/disappears (apparently from US) suddenly…

    Overall, Sachien was better of the three movies (pls consider tht i’m not criticising CM/ME and not a serious fan of either of the stars, of even a fan of vijay for tht matter)

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  2. LG,
    Did this movie even deserve a review!!?? I couldnt understand the purpose of making the movie in the first place… and then the purpose of Genelia’s character!! and above all, Bipasha? what the hell were they trying?!!!

    Hope John lives upto the Dad’s name in future atleast:(

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  5. The review is very late, But still it is biased, why you all people dont like Vijay, I am really not a very big fan of Vijay, but still the movie is ok, it is bubbly and colorful, while Vijay in his 30s looks trim and can act as a college student, his rival Ajit, can do the same, he too has acted as college student in Ji, which is even worse than this, Atleast there is some love chemistry between Vijay and Genelia in this movie, it can be watched atleast once.

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  6. What a coincidence… I watched the movie just now and connect to the net to see your review on that. Regretted that I didn’t read this 3 hrs back. What a royal waste of time!!

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  8. I feel that it is a biased review. I enjoyed the movie better than, CM/ME. Still i am a Fan of Rajini. Atleast its better than ME. Sachien is a Good entertainer. There is no message or serious stuff in this movie.

    You can watch and enjoy this movie.

    Thanks
    Maruthi

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  9. I saw the 3 new yr releases on 3 consecutive releases. 1st saw Mumbai express as i am a kamal fan.It was a big disappointment as i was expecting a lot. But i didnt realise 2 hours passing by.Then chandramukhi.I am not a big fan of rajini nor do i hate his movies. But i like silly comedies and i was expecting this to be in the arunuachalam mould.Again this was a disappointment.Next came sachin. After being hugely let down by those 2 movies,i had no hope for this one.But found it midly amusing. It had no pretentions that it was a gd movie.Everything expt Jeeva was sloppy .Maybe bcos i had low expectations of this one, i found sachin being the better of the 3.

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  10. Guru,
    Imagine this movie was rated 41/100 in Anantha Vikatan where as Mumbai Xpress got 40/100 and CM got 39/100.Does Sachien really worth 41/100 ?
    Well said that the Mist follows the characters …i think the director got too much inspired by Idayathey thirudathey’s serene beauty of Ooty , masterfully shot by P.C. Sriram.

    Sachien is sachin tendulkar these days … !!!

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  11. Guru,
    You pretty much said everything i wanted to say about the movie. The very fact that it survived the opening weeks (at least in Chennai) speaks volumes about our “intelligent” audience.

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  12. Just leaving office to watch Anniyan !! Wish you had given a review by now…

    lately, vijay’s movies all look the same… i find it hard to differentiate between gilli and thiruppachi and the other movie..(whoops i forgot the movie names..) sivakasi looks to be followig the same old trend..

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  13. lazygeek,
    i m very regular reader of ur blog though this is my 1st comment. very good revu on sachein. i hate vijay. all his movies are non sense. he is spoiling the tamil film industry. chandramukhi is also a very bad remake of a great movie. mumbai express was easily the best among the april 14 releases. kana kandean, is the best of this summer IMHO. anniyan is very good but seems to be a money waste. ullam ketkumae and arindhum ariyamalum were also good movies.

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  14. Hmm, I am one of those “intelligent audience” who liked Sachein. It had no screen play, no logic, horrible looking Bipasha, Vadivelu’s non comedy, the smoke joke and many more loopholes. But still some how I came out of the theater with a smile enjoying the movie.

    It maye be because of the ambience (saw it in Mayajaal) or the company. Truth be told, it was because the movie didn’t pretend to be anything great, just stuck to the one liner of boy meets girl and falls in love story. It may be low brow fare, but as somebody said in the comments I found it mildly amusing.

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  15. Lazy,
    I sort of agree with your review of sachien. But note that Vijay does not care. He cares about making a movie which makes money. He knows his limitations and his limitations are within the boundaries that say that the movie shall have some good dances, good songs, good fights and a romantic theme with some bad people thrown in. He just does the variations of it. He looks young enough to handle himself in movies like them. He does not want to push the envelope. He is happy there. So if you notice his Gilli, Sachien, and the other movies of his in the last few years are the same.

    I have a request – you should some how plan on doing reviews on other movies too. It looks like we locks ourselves to movies either by certain directors and certain actors. What we end up doing is that we do not review other movies – there are a large number being released in tamil

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  16. LG,
    I couldn’t belive this coincidence.I watched this movie sterday & thought of bashing it today in my blog.U came up with all my opinions.
    I also thought of the marks given by vikatan for the three movies is biased.(it is 41,40 & 42 i guess)
    It never deserved 42 or 41.
    Horrible comedy & dialogue delivery.

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  18. I thought Mumbai Xpress was a big disappointment. kamal works really hard for all his movies, but he has his own way. why does he put vayapuri, and pasupathi who have no market right now. rajni intelligently puts vayapuri who is one of the leading comedians. i know kamal is giving everyone a chance but its not helping him or his movies. kamal should use vivek in his movies.

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  20. Guru,
    On a related note, Anniyan is also as bad! worstest-u infact! thaanga mudiyalai. Have put up something resembling a review. Don’t waste time buying/downloading it 😉

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  21. If this is your reaction to a “bareable” movie like Sachien…I dont know what you will have to say about Anniyan! I was prompted to leave the theater twice!

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  23. comeon, give Shankar a break. its true, he hyped the movie so much, we had big expectations for this movie. But it is not as bad as all the other crap that is coming out as movies.

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  24. From the comments, I cant believe so many of us watched sachin yesterday. I could not stand this movie. I watched the first 30 mins and couldn’t take it any more, had to abandon the movie. Vijay antiques were pathetic. I re-evaluvated my views on him after watching ghilli. Sachin has restored in me the old views that I had.

    Anniyan is better in every aspect when compared to sachin. Even CM which I thought was very average is watchable as compared to sachin.

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  25. Vijays movies worth mentioning are gilli (but credit goes to the director dharani) and kushi (reason ditto). period.

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  26. I dont even know how CM can be considered a good movie. The movie was a bad remake, it was a hit only because Rajni acted in it.

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  27. I am not a big fan of vijay or rajini but a very big mistake the unit had did was to release it along with chandramukhi.

    If the movie was released any other time, it would have been a decent hit and you would have seen that movie with that bias. there is a big possiblity that you might have even liked it then too.

    It is still a stupid decision to release it with chandramukhi

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  28. Me too watched Sachein yesterday. I liked the movie. i am happy that i was not educated about split personality, multiple personality disorder etc. both vijay and genelia(so cuuuute) have done a decent job. it was welcome break from vijay’s regular movies like thirupachi, madurai and thirumalai.

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  29. A Vijay movie is not worth reviewing nor mentioning. He makes a mockery of cinema, Nuff said.

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  30. yeah, i am not a big vijay fan either. only movie i liked recently is Gilli, you have to agree he acted well in that movie, his comedy was good. Dharani’s direction, and also Prakashraj made gilli good

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  31. Sachein certainly not a good movie. Imagine i watched this movie on the first day of release and you can understand how wouuld i have felt as i was trying to make an exit during interval but for my companions i had to watch whole movie.Interesting part is, a girl sitting besides me had tears at the end of movie. I dont get the idea for which she had emotions out of her.

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  32. Guru,
    Have corrected the error abt the music director. And me is really surprised with you visiting me crappy blog! me is honored by you commenting there!

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  33. I am not at all a big fan of Vijay but this movie was much better than thirumalai,madurey, thirupachi in a way that i could sit and watch it even after the interval. Sachin was OK, if you are really bored and have nothing else to do , you can watch it.

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  34. Magnus, I would say CM and ME were on the same plane except that ME was a neat experiment that would fetch results in the long run. CM is already filling the producer’s pockets. Sachein could be a hit but I couldn’t sit through.

    Nithya, I sure didn’t reserve a review except for Jeeva’s cinematography. I was expecting it to be a OK movie just for Johan, son of Mahendran. Big Let down !!

    Maran, What you said about shoulder pads were true. Did you check Surya having those pads in Naerukku Naer. Especially in the scene where Vijay spills Surya’s pepsi in restaurant. Funny and obvious.

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  35. Aishwarya, I only wish none of us Kizhichufy for many movies. The standards could be better, I wish.

    Arun, So much for the love chemistry between Vijay and Genelia. I lost my personal physics of gravity between the movie 😉

    Chakra, We are victims on the same day !! Whatcha say…

    Rasa, I hope not. Let’s see.

    Itend, Can’t believe you wish to choose Sachein amoing the CM/ME/Sachein. But yeah, it depends. For once, I like thirumalai. It’s like that.

    Mags, Pottu Thakku Machi !! Orey Punch dialogue kudukara…

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  36. Keerthi, So did you like Anniyan ?

    Karthi, Whether we hate Vijay or not is immaterial. There is a huge fan following for him and he will be active atleast for the next 2 years. Two years from if someone reads this comment, they might have a hearty laugh. Could be for good or bad !!

    Chenthil, I am sure you enjoyed the movie because of Mayajal. I’ve felt the same before.

    Srini, Point noted. Not that I don’t want to review them. I probably don’t see them or there is nothing big for me to say on them. I want to watch Kannadi Pookal.

    Raj, So we will also watch Anniyan together just like Sachein 😉

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  37. Tilo, Are you referring to Kakkha Kakkha as KK. Can’t get them solved 😉

    Tamil, Thanks for the pointer.

    Sriram, Read your review. Man, I only I am also not going to claim $12 from Shankar.

    Aswhini, Don’t scare me .

    Aprm, Join the club of Sachein watchers over the weekend.

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  38. Kalpana, Perfect. Add Jyothika in the Kushi winners list.

    Nitin, Accept that CM was a bad remake. No matter if Rajini starred or not, It would have been a hit.

    Saravanan, I see the subtly obvious comment there.

    Quote – Interesting part is, a girl sitting besides me had tears at the end of movie. I dont get the idea for which she had emotions out of her.

    Saithilak, There is nothing interesting here. I am thinking that you were stamping her foot throughout the movie 😉 I am sure it wasn’t Vijay/Genelia having wedlock.

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  42. Lazy, I did not like Anniyan. I was feeling completely bored and lost. The way it started, with Vikram applying the “Srichurnam” in a classic way, i thought the movie is all perfect.. but then Shankar messed it up.. I attempted a review on the movie.. gimme your comments to it (You’ve not watched that movie yet ??).

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  43. lazy,
    off topic,
    There is this new movie ..
    arindhum ariyamalum. Barring the typical filmi ending, it has a different story line 4 a tamil movie & a new guy to watch out for… Arya (kutty). I thought the film worked ‘coz of him. He is much better than the present lot of new comers, considering that this is his debut. He is easy on the eyes too.
    Why dont u check it out & give a review ? Will b a break 4 u from all the formulaic movies. Then again, it is no great shakes, but watchable 4 its different story& arya.

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  44. Vijay had just two major dialogues in the movie
    So sweet
    So cute

    Genilia had just two major dialogues
    Enna irritate pannatha Sachien
    Shut up

    And killing a poor kid to win the love of genilia was just too much. Director miserably failed. This was my first movie of Vijay in the theatre though I have grown to become an avid fan of his after seeing Thirumalai and Gilli. It was not worth the money spent.

    Am glad he stuck to action in Sivakasi.

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  45. LG, Udhiri Pookkall paathen recently…what a brilliant film…but it was extremely disturbing too…

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  46. I saw ‘Madurey’ while flying on Singapore airlines. Like the plane the movie also runs on auto-pilot. Nothing is unwatchable – I mean he isn’t TRajendhar or RajKiran – and Vijay always underplays himself in a tolerable way. Every now and then there is something different, but different only in the usual style. For college students and the like, it must be like eating greasy masala dosa in their favorite hotel. Like it or not, Vijay is most value for producers’ money in tamil world.

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  48. i really enjoying seeing this filem and the songs also so good.i am also true fan of vijay.OK.LOVE VIJAY>

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