PULI - Ilayathalapathy VIJAY| Sruthi Haasan | Sudeep | Chimbudevan | DSP |

[Shanker]

Just caught the 9pm show at Rex. Was a full house.

Let me start the review with the score, a very generous 3/5 mostly for Vijay's performance and the effort. Anyone who tells you its either excellent or downright terrible is lying. It's all in all an average film.

Chimbudevan disappoints. His script is not fresh, his execution is flawed. This will be one of the movies Vijay will file under 'Decent story, terrible execution'. I know I am hard on the movie and after a polished product like Kaththi, Puli is a let down. The one word I kept hearing associated with the movie is that its a 'family entertainer' and 'kids will love it'. If its appropriate for Shruti to dance in skimpy outfits to cheap choreography, then I think you can call it that. I am a straight male so I did not find issue with it but my significant other sure did. The action sequences, while quite exhilarating, were too long and also with too many slow-mo effects.

Now to the good part. All the cast did their parts well, especially Sudeep. SriDevi could have been utilized more but that might just be me. Prabhu and Nandita were good in their cameos. Comedy was sufficient. The songs were helped greatly by the visualization, special mention to Vijay's dance. BGM was surprisingly pretty good. The behind the scene heroes of this movie are DoP Natty and Art Director Muthuraj. Both did their parts to perfection. Last but not least, Vijay. As with most average movies he was in, he carries the film on his shoulders from beginning to end. Be it action, comedy, dance or sentiment, this man can do it and do it well. I just hope directors use him better, script wise and execution wise.

On towards Vijay59.