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‘Irumbu Thirai’ Review: Scarefest for Smartphone Users

Irumbu Thirai Review: A scarefest for anyone with a smartphone, this one is cheap thrills all through.

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Irumbu Thirai

Irumbu Thirai

Irumbu Thirai, produced by and starring Vishal, does what Enemy of the State did; scares you for owning a phone and an Aadhaar card. But it does so with great fights and an absolutely dumbed down script.

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Remember how in Men in Black (1997), the agents get their news about aliens from a yellow tabloid? Irumbu Thirai is the yellow tabloid of data hacking.

PS Mithran, a debutante director, has managed to tick all of the right boxes for what constitutes a mass masala flick. There’s this inseparable mix of outdated, outlandish and occasionally cool tech on display. A larger-than-life hero in Vishal (who’s larger-than-life even in real life) who can carry out a fight in slo-mo. A good looking heroine in Samantha (who does nothing). An unrelated comedy track, with Robo Shankar, whose best work is still ahead of him. And...I guess that’s about it!

The movie is riveting in parts, especially when it comes to showing how easy it is to hack your information. But then 2:45 hours is unsustainably long.

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Arjun is Memorable

Irumbu Thirai is one of those movies that suffers from really bad pacing. Just when you think the scene is picking up heat, it fizzles, and then builds up again, only to fizzle out. This goes on right up to the climax scene that flits between a bout of fisticuffs (hollywood, bollywood or tollywood, it all ends in hand to hand combat. Even when the world is in nuclear danger) and dialogue that Arjun (villain) and Vishal have, while they each recover from the other’s blows.

Arjun seems to be on a roll, with a plum role in Allu Arjun’s blockbuster Naa Peru Surya Naa Illu India (Telugu) and now this. While Irumbu Thirai has its many flaws, it will certainly be remembered for Arjun’s performance, and persona, which has been stylised from the first frame to the last.

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Fear the Aadhaar Card!

The movie is about how easy it is to hack into one’s life through one’s digital footprint (phone, FB, KYC). The biggest villain of an individual’s privacy, which was revealed right toward the end of the movie as Arjun’s coup de gra, was his control over Aadhaar accounts. The post credits scene (yes, there is one) talks about how we are ‘careless people stuck in a in cashless economy’.

The nexus between those who ask for your information, and those who sell it to others who need it, has been shown beautifully.

How your information travels from a voucher you fill in a lucky draw in a mall, to a middleman who copies an extra set before it goes to the xerox store, and why you don’t get loan calls once you’ve been rejected by one bank has been beautifully shown. 

Where the movie fails is in creating any sense of patriotism, despite the fact that the hero is an army man. His intro, as a man who wishes to leave the country (because everything here makes him angry), makes it hard to take his intentions seriously after. The other issue with the film is that it eventually justifies lynching. It is only to counter this that the last frame of the movie is of the villain traveling in the police jeep planning the next digital hack; it feels like an afterthought, since this scene comes right after he’s beaten by a mob of hundreds of people.

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Irumbu Thirai is full of cheap thrills and a few minutes of an interesting premise of data hacking. It’ll make you worry about taking your next selfie, but you’ll remember little else.
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Topics:  Samantha Ruth Prabhu   Vishal 

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