If you are watching Vikram Vedha for the first time, you might find pleasure in the puzzle-like plot. Hrithik Roshan who is in blazing flamboyant ferocious form the director Duo Pushkar Gayatri among the most exciting artistic voices in Contemporary Indian Cinema early this year.
In Vikram Vedha, there are dark turns and twists to mythology reimagining the Vikram Betal tale as the story of a cop and a criminal. Vikram is ostensibly the good guy he’s this encounter specialist with a body count higher than many killers but he sleeps well at night because he believes that he’s cleaning up the system. The film begins with a continuous single shot which establishes Vikram’s easy Authority and camaraderie with his team the action sequence which follows also establishes the casualness with which he kills Vikram. Looks at the world with this simple blunt edged view that neatly separates people and actions into innocent or guilty black or white. As he tells a junior meanwhile Veda is the stuff of myth he’s a legendary gangster.
The film in Hindi gave them a chance to pitch the characters in a completely different way the setting is now Lucknow instead of Chennai. The Hindi dialogue written by B.A Fida and Manoj with characters referring to themselves as hum and using words like dehlis to this very specific up accent with which Veda speaks he also throws in zingers like, ‘Apne ko khone ka pain, sala ekdum same to same‘.
Characters
Characters never feel really rooted in the soil in the way they did in the original film. They come off as bollywood’s ideas or what Lucknow locals might be like. The trouble is that the original script which pushkar and Gayatri wrote was so good that there is little room for improvement. So the Hindi version is mostly a scene to scene the screenplay has the same tones but the characters aren’t as meaty in the Tamil version.
Verdict
Even minor players were humanized with humor and flavor here they mostly just come off as generic gangsters and cops Saif Ali Khan confidently steps into madhavan’s large shoes. Hrithik Roshan gives a more unhinged intensity with unkempt hair and a manic. He’s more strained but he’s also very exciting it’s always nice to see a superstar let go of vanity and appear determinedly nasty. He says,’Ek kahani sunae sir?’ which is impossible to resist. Vikram Vedha is a treat to your eyes if you are into action-thriller.