Directors Cut...

Yet another bad movie; this time in Malayalam... 'Pokkiri Rajah'. With a name like that, I was not expecting a 'Benhur'...' but is it not prudent to expect a minimal level of sane entertainment...but nooooo. This movie falls into a genre called 'stupid'. Not comedy, not action, not sci-fi, no ... this is a 'stupid' movie... At a video library, this is the movie you would get if you asked for a stupid movie... Now why did I watch it...!!! aah...!!!

a gun shot...


In our movies, a gun is a novelty item to be displayed often but seldom used. In the movie 'Lelam' M. G Soman takes a gun from one of the baddies and casually suggests the origin of the make. "Germana... allyoda?" now that was kinda cool, there was a godfather like charm and style. At the other end was a Suresh Gopi movie, where they seemed to loose or find the bloody Pivoting Knot or whatever of an AK 47 and do some crap with it. The presentation seemed odd and the whole gun affair was an overkill. I believe all our actors should read through Jeff Cooper’s gun usage techniques before grabbing one.

Anyhow, the most we can expect with a gun, is for the hero to display his expertise in ‘Tanju’ and grab the gun from the villain in a supposedly swift move which is shown in slow-motion. The confused villain has now lost his only gun. 

I think it has been quite a while since a gun shot was fired in a mallu movie. Especially during the final stand-off. Even if our hero has a gun, he resorts to fist fight… A classic example was Keerthichakra... Mohanlal was responsible for the death (on screen...) of that Tamil actor and widowed his wife, the good looking girl.

Our actors, heroes, rather superstars, have this intense desire to personally beat up all the antagonists; the villain, his side kick, his concubine, her mother and any cops in sight, unless, he himself is a cop in which case there will be a bad cop who gets beaten.

Now all this physical exertion calls for some sound physique which could portray the appearance of strength, stamina and athletic ability. But far from that, our heroes are usually fat, chubby, fair, globoids who wallow all around the screen.

Mollywood & Kollywood; 

In Indian, especially South Indian movies, the usual strategy of fighting the villain is by deploying some long, senseless, rhyming monologues which somehow manage to tire the villain who always appears to be hurt and shows his true sensitive side after the dialogue monologue ends… or the villain does not comprehend the meaning and seem confused... Sometimes, the villain would retort with an equally long senseless sentence which can hurt out heroes sentiments.

Nevertheless, towards the end, our hero can no longer take it… his wife was fucked, sister was raped and his mother was brutally murdered along with his father even before he was born… his only hope for a “and they lived happily ever after” dance sequence, is the heroine, who we had briefly seen in two songs (no wonder our hero forgot to protect her) is now taken captive. 

While she is being tied up and prepared for a tasty rape, yes… it usually takes less time to prepare chicken curry… the villain finally comes and delicately begins to lick or bite her, presumably, he wants to kiss her. No touching on boobs or anything of that sort… the worst can be a kiss on the lips followed by what appears to be an act of learning to swim on top of a woman… the reverence of removing her clothes often occurs only after some rolling and licking… but our hero somehow manages to reach the scene before she looses her bra and panties…

Another type of rape involves a game of ‘Kabadi’ with the villain and the chubby lady in a locked room… the villain usually bolts one door to convey the message that he is about rape her. Even if it is his place, unknown to him, the room has another door which is left open and the lady manages to escape through this door and runs straight to our heroes arms, legs, den whatever falls in the way, followed closely by the really stupid villain who is confronted by the hero…

And then a long and arduous fight sequence follows. Now, the hero forgets all about his age, blood pressure and BMI. What follows is a weird act of body exertion with gestures and flights that weaken once belief in the very existence of physics and physical endurance…

The pace of body movement is represented by a ‘swissshhh’ sound as the heavy hairy body cuts through the wind. When a punch lands on the villain, the force and fury is represented by a ‘loud Bushuuum’ sound, which causes the poor guys facial fat to flutter around a bit… cars, rickshaws, small shops, entire buildings, bridges, trees everything and anything that falls in the way is broken during the fight sequence… Finally, when the villain is tired (almost finished), the Bushuum gains an echo;

Bushuum, Bushum bushum, shum shum…

And there lay on the floor, the poor guy who was causing our hero so much of trouble through out the 3 hours and 15 minutes, the length of the movie being 3 and half hours with 15 minutes for fighting…

Back to 'Pokkiri Rajah'... well forgot what it was all about... not a memorable movie that is... but so much was my frustration that I had to type all of this to vent out the tears...

Not that all movies are bad; far from it some of the movies are exemplary…

Good movies as well as bad movies are being made today as it was made yesterday as was done the day before… Somehow, the number of good movies seemed to have gone down a bit… no worries with that though...

What worries me is the onset of really stupid movies which defies commonsense and sanity… this might be alright in some of our neighboring states but in mallu land, where in the great golden 80’s and early 90’s some of the best movies were made, this defines the start of a retreat, a slowdown in evolution, a large step backward…


If the sole purpose of a movie is for the producer to make money, then why not focus on porn…If the sole objective of any business for that matter was to make money, pimping would be the best job, prostitutes the best investment and a brothel the best enterprise…