⭐⭐⭐½
What’s Good: Vijay delivering the regular dose of entertainment to his fans, if movies were just about style this one would’ve won it all!
What’s Bad: Story never gets to be the ‘beast’ & it boils down to just being like a forgotten supporting character
Loo Break: If you’re in just for Vijay, you won’t need any break but if you’re here for something else, try to book a ticket near the audi’s entrance
Watch or Not?: I would’ve said just Vijay fans, but they’ll anyway watch it. So, for the remaining ones, read & decide! (Ninja technique of increasing session time)
Available On: Theatrical Release
Runtime: 155 Minutes
User Rating:
Flying through hundreds of bullets, we’re introduced to the ‘beast’ of the film, Veeraraghavan (Vijay), a R&AW who goes against the government to successfully execute a deadly mission but ends up emotionally scarring himself. Veera goes on to live a simple life leaving his job and tumbles into Preethi (Pooja Hegde) who is engaged, but of course, falls for Veera because he’s the lead.
On not so one fine day, a mall gets hijacked and Veera happens to be there with Preethi and a few of his people. You know if it’s a hijack, it’ll be terrorists, if there are terrorists, they’ll demand to release their leader who’s jailed for killing people, if there’s such leader he’ll befriend someone from a political party and all of this happens here. Towards the end, there are some air-wars as well, but by then it became too difficult for me to keep a track of what was actually going on.
Beast Movie Review: Script Analysis
Nelson tries to take the ‘Doctor’ route once again retaining the humour-thriller formula, but the mixed genres instead of complementing each other, they annihilate each other’s space. The thrilling story does intrigue you using its smart traps but it just loses momentum on switching between a pacy actioner, a lame love story and a moderate comedy. The extremely convenient love angle doesn’t help the script to create an emotional connect with the leading pair.
The story very clearly (and rightly so) keeps Vijay as the centre of attraction, but the problem starts when he’s the ‘only’ centre of attraction because there’s not much happening around him. Manoj Paramahamsa’s camera covers a 360° view around Vijay, as he leaves no corner vacant from which you can probably shoot Thalapathy. A scene involves the camera angle to do a cartwheel & Manoj achieves that with ultra-smoothness.
R. Nirmal’s edit is effortlessly delicious in the action sequences, but there’s a lot of clutter left behind for the final cut by Nelson. Certain comical sequences will be enjoyed by Tamil audiences, as certain jokes won’t work the same way for someone like me watching the film with subtitles.
Beast Movie Review: Star Performance
As one would expect from the director, he has designed scenes for Vijay to exhibit his machoism and that’s totally fine because he owns them all. From breaking the fourth wall by sucking a glass piece from his hand, staring into the camera while wiping blood from his face and many more such scenes allow Vijay to just speak to his crazy fans and these are the film’s best shots. We all know these kinda roles have become a cake-walk for him, and the problem is we’ve seen cake-walk too many times now.
First Radhe Shyam and now this, Pooja Hegde should start choosing scripts that justify the talent she possesses. We’ve seen she could be more than her looks but the makers, too, will have to understand this. Here too, she gets a flowerpot character who doesn’t add any substance to the script.
Selvaraghavan’s Althaf could’ve had a brilliant impact on the narrative if Nelson would’ve focused on the right things. His role had so much more unexplored meat but unfortunately remains underutilised till the end. If there’s someone who really nailed the funny portions, it has to be VTV Ganesh. He garners the maximum laughs and such a level of comedy throughout wouldn’t have hurt this much. Yogi Babu in his limited screen space enjoys a half-baked role that ranges from being extremely entertaining to ‘what the f*ck was that?’.
Beast Movie Review: Direction, Music
Nelson falls for the very similar filmmaking trap of compromising style with substance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s nothing significant here, but there are a lot of insignificant speed-breakers which become the issue. If someone can edit out the lousy love angle, some forced fun sequences keeping the action at the core, this would’ve been an amazing attempt majorly because of its cinematic style.
Anirudh rarely disappoints with the peppy background scores and the same is the case with Beast. Songs definitely are at your face forced but the BGM is the real deal here.
Beast Movie Review: The Last Word
All said and done, this is pure entertainment fodder for Vijay fans and one should rightfully expect the same from it. But if you’re looking for a solid storyline like Master had, I’m afraid you’d have to re-watch that.
Three and a half stars!
