It’s not just physical fighting and there is brain work and strategic thinking involved, at least compared to normal masala or mass movies that we usually get.ĭespite all this, why don’t we get that nail-biting feeling like in the Hollywood films? One reason is the length which is two hours and forty minutes! It is simply too long for this kind of a movie. The hero may save the day but he also loses a lot. Refreshingly, as Arya and Vishal battle each other, there is serious collateral damage. They’re not just cool things or events that are being thrown about but they actually play a function in the overall story and structure.
All of these come back at least once in the screenplay. There are several concepts like photographic memory, seafood allergy, a line when two people are playing chess where one guy says, “Yen rani ya nee thodave mudiyaadu” (You cannot touch my queen) and there is the entirely accidental way in which Arya and Vishal’s characters meet in childhood. Despite some really flabby dialogue, and there’s a lot of talking, the basic writing of the film is pretty solid. But, take for instance, this one romance track where the details are revealed slowly and they turn out to be connected to childhood events which we see at the beginning of the film. I won’t give away too much of the story because a lot of the film happens with you trying not to out-guess it. When this is done with nice sensibilities, it also feels like Tamil cinema can absorb these aspects while still retaining its soul. It is a pretty formulaic, Hollywood-y outing but even that, when done well, has its own kind of pleasures. I don’t want to make it sound like a revolutionary movie. The slick Anand Shankar sensibility that we saw in Arima Nambi is back.
Yes, the film is too long and there is a mood-killing romance but it is not allowed to go on for too long. The big relief about Enemy is that it is a return to form for this filmmaker.
I don’t know how that movie did in the box office but since then, Anand Shankar has become more mainstream with films like Iru Mugan and NOTA which were underwhelming compared to Arima Nambi. The atmosphere was tense and had a real mood there. There was no flashy cutting or mood killing romance. When Anand Shankar debuted with Arima Nambi, I was pleasantly surprised.
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