Con City
is a crime comedy movie starring Arjun Das, Anna Ben, Yogi Babu, Vadivukkarasi, Imman Annachi and many others. I was excited to watch this movie after seeing the trailer. I have already said this before. I usually never watch trailers or even teasers. The last movie for which I did that was Por Thozhil. That one experience was enough for me because I trained myself to avoid that habit. There is a YouTube channel that I keep checking regularly to see if they have uploaded any new videos. One day, when I went there to check, I saw this movie's thumbnail. The moment I saw the title, my finger acted on its own and clicked it. Then I ended up watching the trailer. The trailer made me want to watch the movie. Now I have watched it. Let us see how the experience was.
According to the story, a family runs a hotel in Mangalore. There is a husband, wife, a young boy, the wife's brother and their mother. But their background is something like Baashha. Not gangsters, but scammers. The backstory has a lot of weight. And when something has weight, we immediately think of Baashha, right? In that backstory, three of the four people have separate lives. Each of them is pushed into scamming because they need money. As they continue doing scams, they start earning well. Once their debts are cleared, they get trapped by greed. When greed takes over, no magic words can open the cave and let you out. They get stuck badly. What really impressed me in this movie was the interval sequence. That is the universal moral of the story. Up to a certain level, the wrong things they do actually help them survive. But because they continue doing those things beyond their needs, the same mistakes end up trapping them. At first, it was necessity. Now it is pure greed. Along with greed comes arrogance. For money, they forget who they are and why they started doing all this. They go deeper and deeper until they finally slip. After that comes seven years of hotel life. Then their son gets kidnapped and they have no choice but to return to their old life. What they do next and how they deal with the situation forms the rest of the story.
Saravanan is played by Arjun Das. He is the father of the kidnapped boy. Honestly, this is Arjun Das's first ball century. A very responsible hero. Most of Saravanan's character is seen only in the first half. The second half becomes more cinematic, so there is less scope for performance. There is one scene where the girl he loves and her father come to meet him for the first time at his house. At that exact moment, loan collectors arrive and speak badly to him. His reactions while worrying about what her father and she might think of him show us the real Saravanan. Later, during the interval sequence, the reactions he gives after getting trapped make us feel genuinely worried for him. We end up thinking Oh no, the hero who was doing all these wrong things has finally been caught. The movie makes our eyes widen. When you watch the movie, check for yourself whether your eyes widened during the interval sequence.
Apart from Saravanan, Anna Ben plays Mithra. The reasons shown for why she starts scamming were not very convincing to me. Still, she becomes part of the scams. Those portions did not attract me much. Honestly, whenever Anna Ben acted in a movie, I used to be one of the first people to watch it in theatres. But after Naradan, I stopped doing that. It was a double disappointment. One because of Tovino Thomas and another because of Anna Ben. With this movie, I feel that interest has started again. I have still not watched the movie she did with Soori. Maybe I will watch it now. Coming back to the point, only Mithra's reasons for becoming a scammer felt weak to me. Otherwise, her performance was decent. But there was not much scope for her character.
Another set of scammers with much more scope were Yogi Babu and Vadivukkarasi. Unfortunately, that scope exists only in one or two scenes. After that, throughout the movie, Yogi Babu never really feels like Jackie and Vadivukkarasi never really feels like Jackie's mother. Yogi Babu simply feels like Yogi Babu. Vadivukkarasi feels more like Yogi Babu's mother than Jackie's mother. Pure cinema. At times, Vadivukkarasi's performance even reminded me of Urvashi. This was the biggest problem in the movie.
Many people wrote that the first half was slow. But for me, the real issue starts in the second half where the characters move into heroism, heroine moments and punch dialogues. They get trapped within the usual rules of commercial cinema. Maybe the makers thought that was enough. Personally, I liked Arjun Das, Yogi Babu and Vadivukkarasi much more in the first half. Anna Ben was still just okay for me. My opinion on that has not changed.
There are a few cinematic moments involving Arjun Das even in the first half. But they feel convincing. There is a scene where I felt that mass belongs to Rajini even if Rajini himself is not acting in it. Anyone can get cheers when they appear on screen. But that magnetic charm belongs only to Rajinikanth. I am honestly not even a Rajini fan. Yet while watching this movie, I felt that there is a Rajini fan somewhere inside me.
The movie is excellent. We actually have very few heist movies in Tamil cinema. Sathuranga Vettai, Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal, Rajathandhiram and Soodhu Kavvum are first grade heist movies. Mankatha, Gentleman, Kanthaswamy and Thaanaa Serndha Koottam are second grade. There is a difference. In the first four movies, greed is the driving force behind the heists. That feels convincing. In the others, heroism and Robin Hood style elements take center stage. We never really approach them as pure heist movies.
Put your hand on your conscience and tell me. Did we ever think about these movies in this way before I separated them into categories? There may be more heist movies. But none of them came to my mind while writing this post. If any movie comes to your mind, leave a comment.
Then again, who is going to comment? As far as I know, only six people on the blog and two people on Facebook actually read these posts. I will keep writing for you, even if it is just one person. My thanks to all of you.
Now let us go our separate ways like Paul Walker and Vin Diesel driving in different directions. We will meet again in the next post. See ya!
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