Weapon Review – Painful To Sit Through!
Ashwin Ram
Weapon is an action thriller starring Vasanth Ravi, Sathyaraj and Rajiv Menon in the lead roles. Directed by Guhan Senniappan. Music is scored by Ghibran.
Premise:
Vasanth Ravi is a YouTuber who is hungry for content. Rajiv Menon is a big shot who is keen on capturing the most powerful weapon in the world. They both look out for the superhuman for their respective needs. What happens after they find out Sathyaraj is the power they are looking for, forms the remaining story.
Writing/ Direction:
The core subject is about a superhero serum and it is established with a solid backstory in the form of a voice-over. But post that the film goes into a full-on clumsy space by trying to sandwich so many fillings within a wafer-thin plot. As it is, the narrative is confusing due to unwanted complications, nowhere native as the writing feels alien and heavily influenced by a lot of Hollywood movies. Many useless chunks, such as Ghost, Black Society, Flawless Corporation, Skull Gang, etc… Unlike the director’s intention, none of these elements give an international touch to the film, the content should have but it failed miserably. Something is constantly happening at a rushed pace, yet the screenplay is a crashing bore as it is possible to connect with the tonnes and tonnes of situations and characters the film involves. After it is revealed that Sathyaraj is the superhuman in the interval, the flow worsens and behaves like a spoof material as many tend to be serious plot-points land as jokes. A couple of decent twists towards the end, but since they came out of nowhere, there is no shock value. Also, how the film utilized the twists is again crappy. A wannabe racy actioner acts like a serial at times as every other scene introduces a new character with a lame purpose to be around. Ends by giving a lead for a sequel, the team’s confidence is appreciable, wish they made the movie with the same level of determination.
Performances:
Same flat stone-face performance from Vasanth Ravi with zero variation, not the biggest of flaws for this movie as there was no scope to act. Sathyaraj’s character could have been much more, but executed poorly, especially him doing Yoga in the mid-air was an instant laughter moment. Rajiv Menon looks like an Amul baby but he plays a menacing villain role which didn’t suit him at all. Many familiar faces are signed up for less than a cameo role who hardly appear for one scene like Kaniha, Yashika Anand, Mime Gopi, Baradwaj Rangan, etc… What an irresponsible decision to make.
Technicalities:
Has one soothing song from Ghibran, otherwise it’s a film that doesn’t give importance to songs or anything for that matter. Extremely loud background score that has absolutely no rhythm. Inconsistent visual pattern with many low quality shots, and the colour tone is purely black, heavily influenced from Vikram. Clumsy from start to finish, such a monotonous edit pattern that doesn’t convey anything with clarity. Poor action choreography, the stunts are so lame that are worthy only to make fun of.
Bottomline
The rough outline of the narrative seems to be interesting, but the screenplay is filled with situations and characters that feel like they were extracted from the rough note scribblings. An actioner with no conviction and full of confusion.
Rating – 2/ 5
