Bairavaa (Review): When your name is Vijay, you have the energy and charisma. Vijay owns the film.

Bairavaa is written and directed by Bharathan of Azhagiya Thamizh Magan. Two things stood bright in the trailer, teaser and the posters – Vijay and Santhosh Narayanan. As expected, the whole movie is held by them.

Ilayathalapathy Vijay completely steals the show. He does a lot with his role, as always. Vijay on screen is a delight to watch. His action parts are thrilling and addictive. When your name is Ilayathalapathi Vijay, you have the energy and charisma. Sathish is here with Ilayathalapathi after Kaththi and his comedy works again. He is a good comedian with good timing sense. Keerthy Suresh as a homely nellai girl is so cute and perfectly suits as Vijay’s pair. They look gorgeous together.

Santhosh Narayanan’s background score is electrifying especially the Varalaam Vaa track plus the songs which didn’t seem to work earlier works better with the movie. M. Sukumar’s visuals is another big plus for the movie. The movie looks colorful, vibrant and perfect for a festival-commercial-entertainer, like calling the audience ‘come and celebrate with us’.

What stands out about this movie is obviously the action and comedy. ‘Vijay’s action’ is what you go to see this film for. And it doesn’t disappoint. The bullet scene and the pre-interval fight sequence are the best among all the mass scenes. The action sequences are as exciting as any I have seen in recent mass movies. In terms of action, it’s packed right from the get go! The stunts that they used in this film are very much mass and very impressive too. I would say that Bairavaa doesn’t try to be as massive action movie but has tried to mix some social elements but Bharathan, who doesn’t care about characters loses control over the thread on the flow.

There is a few laughs and a decent action scenes here and there, but all that could have been accomplished in a much shorter run time. On the flip side, like Bharathan’s previous movies Azhagiya Thamizh Magan and Vedhalam, the characters aren’t anything special. The plot and the characters are really thin, to make room for the masala-packets. Very averagely developed. There’s no real character interaction in this movie. There are empty one liners. The sequence of events is one we’ve all seen before, so you never feel particularly interested. Second half is overstretched, goes around for around thirty minutes without any aim, and jumps to the climax. Second half needs immediate trimming for positive word of mouth. Anyhow, overall the mass commercial formula works well here like Theri.

That being said, this movie is everything you can expect it to be.