Following the father-in-law's footsteps - a movie review

Vellai Illa Patadhaari

A comedy drama worth watching once if you are a hard-core Dhanush fan or are missing the yesteryear Rajinikanth.

Directed by: Velraj

Starring:

Dhanush

Amala Paul

I fell in love with Dhanush after I heard "Why this kolaveri di", though '3' failed to impress me.  However, as I started watching more of his movies and listening to more of his movie songs, including those which he has lent his voice to, even before kolaveri happened, I sensed repetition. And after seeing all the raving about Vellai Illa Patadhaari on the internet, I reluctantly agreed to watch it for our weekend movie. Listed below are what I liked and what I did not like about the movie. 

Likes:

• Comedy
• Awareness about organ donation
• Awareness about the sad state of affairs in the country where engineers from all other fields are forced to take up an IT job.
• Catchy music

Dislikes :

• Repetition - have seen most of what Dhanush had to offer in most of his other movies.
• Repetition - have seen most of this good guy always succeeds through hardwork in almost all of Rajinikanth's movies
• Dhanush is trying to follow in his father-in-law's footsteps by introducing a lot of "style" 
• When he speaks out the entire dialogue about how real people struggle to climb up the ladder and are crushed by the rich kids. 
• When he gets his cigarette lighted up from the very guy that he beat up

•  A scrawny Dhanush beating up a group of people, including when he takes off his shirt 
• The same Dhanush who could remember that the next door girl lied about him lying drunk on the street can't remember that the same girl had said that she liked "Raghu" to "Karthik".. Aaargghhhh!!
• Music seems repetitive too though it is catchy

Aye Aye Captain!

An office outing on a Thursday can make it seem like the weekend has come early. So we wound up watching Captain Phillips.

The movie is based on the true story of a Captain Phillips who was taken hostage when the first American cargo ship, in history, to be attacked by pirates, was hijacked. The movie tries to portray the relationship between Captain Phillips and the "captain" of the pirates, the ordeal that Captain Phillips underwent as a hostage and the rescue mission by the USS BainBridge.

What I wanted to capture here are the thoughts that arose in my head while and post watching the movie.

What caused ex-fishermen to become pirates?
There is a scene where "Muse", the leader of a pirates group is woken up because his bosses were arriving.  The bosses yell at the pirates to be at sea as that is where they can make money. And then you see many people willing to risk their lives to be chosen in the pirates crew so that they could make some money. So this shows that there are very limited options to earn a living in Somalia, which is one of the reasons why they resort to become pirates. It is seen as "easy money". Most of these people who resort to becoming pirates are ex-fishermen whose source of earning a living has been taken away. Post the Somali Civi War, the Somali government collapsed and ships of international corporations starting dumping toxic waste into the Somali waters. This causes death of the aquatic life and in most cases, there is no chance of revival. Therefore the fishermen are left without a means of livelihood.

Yes, I used to think that money was the root cause of all evil but not anymore. Human greed for wealth and power are the root cause of all evil.

Could the USA have done better?
And then you see the USS Bainbridge coming to rescue Captain Phillips but under huge pressures from the government. One gets to see the huge infrastructure put into place by the US Navy to prevent pirate hijackings. It is no small feat, with the navy, airforce, healthcare specialists and SEAL marksmen, to name a few, being involved. Would the situation have been different if the United States had spent the money that it had spent on building this anti-hijacking squad on creating jobs in Somalia for these forlorn fishermen?

Well, may be they are doing something else about it, but these are my thoughts after watching the movie. The movie is a must watch and it is always a pleasure to watch Tom Hanks.