Where do you start? Where do you end? How do you recapture cinematic magic, the captivating power and charisma of one man, who manages to transcend the rational faculties in all of us? How do you re-create this attraction of soul and heart? No matter what, no review is ever going to do justice to Sivaji -The Boss as no writer can summon the ability to bring in words the impossible swathe that Rajnikanth's appeal cuts across various strata of the society.
Rajni's movies are not so much art as appeal. Like mother's cooking which is not about taste, Rajnikanth on screen makes a bonding with your heart. It is about emotions, that maybe blind, but all real and very human. In Sivaji-The Boss, this surreal feeling gets a further magical touch in the form of techno-wizardry that Shankar has patented to be his in Tamil cinema.
When state-of-the-heart and state-of-the-art find a match, what you get is three hours of sustained entertainment that is at once a compelling phantasmagoria of trademark Rajni fun and typical Shankar grandeur. It is a case of desire meeting dream, and almost making it plausible.
The success of Sivaji-The Boss will eventually lie in the fact that both Rajni and Shnakar, with a huge individual constituencies of their own, have not had to break their preserved moulds. Where Rajni and Shankar meet is in their social sensibilities, in their populist propensity to convey, what the industry calls as `the message'.
Sivaji, in that sense, is a contemporary commentary on the state of the nation where as a dialogue in the film aptly sums it up as `the poor get poorer and the rich get richer'. Sivaji has many strands, each unique in its heft and heave. Affordable education and health for all is one theme. Rooting out black money is the main one, however. Woven into this large tapestry is the bureaucratic bunglings, red-tapism and other issues that bug our quotidian life.
Sivaji (Rajnikanth) is a rich NRI software pro. Son of caring parents (Manivannan and Vadivukkarasi), and the nephew of an ever helpful uncle (Vivek), Sivaji comes to India with the larger than life dream of running universities and hospital for the benefit of the poor. (The idea is smartly done when he talks of every riches coming to India, but beggary not going away).
Sivaji has to however contend with Adi Kesavan (Suman), a slimy crocodile of a educationist and a hospital owner. He has vested interests in not allowing Sivaji to get on with his ambitious projects. Sivaji, however, has his heart set. Despite running into a non-cooperating administration (the red-tapism prevalent is exposed in an irony-filled humour), Sivaji soldiers on. He unwillingly greases the palm of venal babus and politicos to get sundry permission required to build the infrastructure.
But Adi consistently turns out to be the spanner in the works and even goes to the extent of unseating the government to stop Sivaji in his tracks. In the meanwhile, Sivaji falls in love with a midlleclass Tamilazharasi (Shriya), who is the daughter of uncompromising parents (Raja and Uma Padmanabhan). Sivaji, with the aid of his uncle, goes out of the way to court the girl and her family. The scenes involving the two families are such a lark that they bring the theatre down in laughter. (Watch out for that riotous Deepavali scene when the families have some rollicking fun).
Tamilazharasi, despite the fear engendered after a fortuneteller predicts calamity for Sivaji if she marries him, finally agrees to be his life partner (the scene at the railway tracks where she accepts as him as his lover is both romantic as well as very humorous). His light-hearted attempts to look fair are also very funny. But on the business front, the evil administration and wily Adi ensure that Sivaji loses all his wealth and all his
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