Tamil moviemakers have hardly ever been good with remakes. The Suriya-starrer, Thaana Serndha Koottam, inspired by Neeraj Pandey's riveting thriller in Hindi, Special 26, was a disaster. A while ago, Jeetu Joseph's Drishyam (2013) in Malayalam with Mohanlal remade in Tamil and titled Papanasam, did not quite live up to the original. This despite the fact that the Tamil version was also helmed by Joseph and had a great actor like Kamal Haasan reprising Mohanlal's role. I think the reason for this disappointment was Kamal's idea (or insistence) that Jospeh should infuse the lead character with a liberal dose of emotion. This is where the Tamil work slipped, because Mohanlal's Georgekutty – a smalltime television cable operator having dropped out of school when he was in class four – had an animal-like cunning, sans any emotional pull and was singularly bent on saving his small family from the clutches of cops. He succeeded with marvellous ease. Kamal got sucked into tears and lost the battle.
It is not very different with Priyadarshan's Nimir, starring Udhayanidhi Stalin. This Tamil movie, culled out of the Malayalam gripper, Maheshinte Prathikaaram, a debut outing from Dileesh Pothan, is not half as exciting as the original was. Though the storylines are more or less similar, Fahadh Faasil gave an extraordinary performance in the Malayalam work as a small-time photographer with a studio in a small town catering essentially to a clientele which was more than happy with passport photographs. Till of course, a young woman troops into his studio looking for a picture of herself that she can have it published on the cover of a magazine.
But this is only a sub-plot, because the main narrative focusses on the lensman's anger over being beaten up by a ruffian. Humiliated, the bruised and battered guy vows revenge, and promises himself and his well-wishers that he will go barefoot till he lays his hands on the bully. But the toughie, Vellaiyappan – played engagingly in Nimir by Samuthirkani – has a sister, Malar (Namitha Promod), and she flips for Stalin's Selvam.
If Nimir gets into distracting songs and dances, Stalin certainly does not have the kind of screen presence that Faasil had. And the Tamil actor also looks uncomfortably wooden to essay a man whose pride has taken a severe beating (with his veshti/dhoti ripped off by Vellaiyappan in a crowded bazaar), and who has also gone through the trauma of losing his childhood sweetheart, Valli (Parvathy Nair), to a rich policeman. And, why cast a great actor (and a great director) like J Mahendran in an utterly insignificant part, that of Selvam's father. For, most of the time the older man appears he confines himself to monosyllabic utterances!
However, I must laud Nimir – and also many other Tamil films – for its guts to set its story in a small town. Tamil cinema is perhaps the only one in India that still weaves its plots around the countryside, its actors still bold enough to be seen in a veshti, its actresses in a half-sari. And, Nimir uses the lushness of Tenkasi and surrounding areas to visually captivate us. It is really a treat to see the greenery and the mountains beyond in a story that could have unfolded anywhere else. Priyadarshan is well known for the way he gets the magic of the landscape into his frames, and this undoubtedly enriches his cinema.
Rating: 2/5
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and movie critic)
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