Thunivu Is Hands-Down Ajith’s Career’s Worst Film

How could Ajith a star of mammoth stature,subject himself to this kind of garbage?!After being hooted out of the theatres Thunivu in Tamil is streaming on Netflix.

It is a shamefully lowbrow crowd-wooer with zero tolerance for subtlety. Loud,uncouth and self congratulatory. it ranks among the lowest level of achievement by a significant superstar in a non-Hindi film.

Heist films are by their very nature very difficult to pull through. The plot has to be action-driven and yet the characters have to be etched in deep shades. Thunivu errs on both counts. The writing is super-sloppy with characters streaming into a hostage-held bank as if it’s a ticket-free carnival.

Cars blow up. Cops are summoned to the spot. They come with so much baggage it feels like they are out to create more waste than abort the heist.

The iconic Ajith plays a gangster with a giant-sized machine gun named Dark Devil…the hero and not his gun is named that, let me hasten to clarify.

Dark Devil is a salt-and-no-pepper bearded dude .He voice-ghosts the cops by speaking in Michael Jackson’s voice and calling himself MJ. To make sure we are tickled pink by this ingenuous cloudburst of humour, the camera quickly cuts to bystanders asking questions likr, ‘Who is this Michael Jackson?’

A couple more films like Thunivu, and people will be asking the same about Ajith. Not only is his Salman-styled action completely out of place, Ajith makes it worse with his crowdpleasing improvisations like doing the moonwalk and dancing while firing his gun.

I didn’t see the film with a live audience. But I can’t imagine Ajith’s fans being pleased with his undignified cool-dude act. The machine gun never leaves his hand. It is his romantic lead in the film. There is a woman protagonist played by Manju Warrier who is to Ajith what Dimple Kapadia is to Shah Rukh Khan in Pathaan.

Action films need a straightforward narrative like Pathaan.In Thunivu writer-director K Vinoth meanders all over the place in the hope that the audience wouldn’t be able to nail down the plot for what it is: utter nonsense.