Endhiran - the Robot Movie Review

I am not generally the type, to see movies on the first day. However , call it sheer luck , a six hour power cut and battery drained laptop forced me to check out the Movie. By the time I am writing  here , there have been almost 100 updates in my Facebook news feed , vouching for the greatness of the movie and I am going to be another addition to that list. For starters, Endhiran is not  your typical Rajnikanth film, no opening song , no punch dialogues,no weird mannerisms.  After a long time, Rajnikanth plays a role completely as director's actor ( Its often the scenario where Director's changes stories and scenes to suit Rajnikanth). You have to give it Shankar, making Rajnikanth stick to the demanding role without his usual cliche.

Rajnikanth for the first time in his career plays the role of Dr Vaseegran , an Robotics Scientist and his progeny in the form of Chitti , the Robot. Its the later that steals our hearts at the end of film. Vaseegran builds the all capable , Chitti with sole purpose of helping humans. The first half portrays quite elegantly how an Robot let loose in the human World would behave. You could see attention to detail  in scenes and dialogues, especially when the Robot utters its first word "Hello World" ( the first program any software engineer does on learning a new language). There numerous instances of humorous interactions , but what captured my attention was how Robot is forced to reconcile the fact  positive and negative human emotions that humans express like we lie , when something works out to our benefit. The inability of  Chitti to emote and interact with humans results in Chitti  being rejected  and making him part of manifold of humdrum Robots that perform routine tasks. Eager to prove, his creation is far better than that. Vaseegran porgrams emotions into Chitti , which starts all the trouble.

The question whether any Robot with Artificial intelligence should have emotions is a controversial one. The Director, Shankar explores full range of emotions portraying the Good,bad and ugly side  of things with Chitti. In this case , trouble starts when Sana ( played by Ashwariya Rai) , Vaseegran's Girl friend starts getting close to Chitti. And it develops feelings for Sana , soon emerging has a competitor to Vaseegran himself.  Like any normal human ,the Robot's love turns to jealousy,anger ; when another man ( in this case the creator ) gets the girl it desires.  The rest of the story is pretty much a to and fro tussle between the Creator and the Robot. There have been many Sci-fi attempts before in Bollywood , most have flopped because of lack of originality or becoming poor imitations of Hollywood . Endhiran stands out because way it treats the story and at the same time sticking to its  desi roots .

The second half though wistfully longing with unwanted songs, more than makes it up for this with an awesome climax. Probably Rajnikanth (aka SuperStar  ) has become so great , there is no greater villain for Rajni to defeat and conquer , unless and otherwise it happens to be Rajni himself. And thats what Shankar does unleashing the bad - ass within the Rajni. Really after seeing the villainous Robot who is quite vivaciously ravenous in his acting , you forget about the Good guy, Chitti. The last 30 mins turn out to be enthralling to Rajni fans; Rajni as an Robot, now has license to what he does best , perform Superman stunts in a sensible way to the story. 

As a whole Endhiran - the Robot is  highly entertaining not only because of its awesome Fx & animatronics  effects by Stan Winston  ( this is the best one has seen in Indian cinema ); not only because it is the most expensive movie made in india ( with an budget of 150 crores , thanks to Sun Pictures) ; not only because of Rajni , who is solely responsible for carrying the role of the creator ,the hero and the villain ( he does of all them with ease ) ; not only because superb back ground music by Oscar winning AR Rehaman; but  also mainly  because of its story which handles question of Robot with Intelligence & emotions in such a wonderfully imaginative  way . Full marks to story writers Shankar ,Kaarky  and  a special mention to Sujatha ,  (an brilliant engineer and writer himself ), because I could see an engineer's hallmark throughout the film with terms like neural schema,patents, worms ,processors, IP address and programs . Thumbs  up to SuperStar and his evergreen panache . Endhiran , the Robot - A story of  transformation of a Bus conductor to a Semi-conductor

Rating: 3.5 / 5

PS: Carry  an earplug  to the  movie if your watching it within the first week because the sounds of fans screaming can be  rapturous.

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