“KO”kkaro…. “KO”

If the superstars and mega stars of Kollywood kingdom were asked 3 weeks back if they wanted to play a journalist in a film, I doubt anyone would have relented. If you grew up in the 90s and were fed with a staple diet of Movies of Hindustan (both south and north), you will be able to recall the fate the characters who played journos met with. Invariably and inevitably, the poor chap would be caught snapping the villains in one of their bad a$$ acts either murdering someone or smuggling out drugs (or was it sugar/ salt in those packets) or the usual act of rape etc. etc. and invariably and inevitably he would hit on to something triggering off a chase by the villain’s henchmen. Invariably and inevitably, the journo meets a Dead end and the camera’s film would end up in the hero’s hands who would then go on to become the savior of the common man and stand toe to toe against the mighty powerful villain. 
But then, equations change, the hunted becomes the hunter, Dada got a birth into IPL as part of pension plan and Obama killed Osama.
Ko, the latest blockbuster from Kollywood factory has a journo playing protagonist for a change. Impeccable wardrobe, unbelievable stunts, gorgeous lady loves and savior of the common man- Jeeva’s journo portrayal is quite enviable especially for the “lady love” piece.
Things get rolling right from Frame 1. The screenplay makes sure that the viewer doesn’t have to waste time thinking of the logic in the scenes and things move at break neck pace. The very first scene is a chase and should easily be one of the best choreographed one in recent times. We get introduced to a photo journalist and his colleagues (lucky bugger has 2 lissome ladies as colleagues. That itself should be an inspiration for many to take up journalism as a profession. Wish someone made a similar movie on IT). There is a young leader of a rising party formed by youth (mostly guys from IT who did not get to go onsite because of an autocratic Project Manager). Then of course, there are the bad guys a.k.a politicians. The movie follows the journo and the young leader as they go about uncovering the dark underbelly lives of the bad guys and bring about a change in the system until the climax where another twisht is revealed. In the process the journo hero gets to romance the girls in ecstasic exotic exhuberant locations and beat up the baddies’ henchmen. A nice mix of realism and commercialism and the perfect masala for the escapist delights of the tamil moviegoer, this summer.
A few things gave me an itch though (and I had to use nycil to fix it. Phew!!! Chennai summer). First one the heroine Karthika. She looks hot, smoking hot at that in those wonderfully designed clothes to highlight the right curves. However, you just get a feeling that she is trying to emulate her mother (Radha, another smoking hotty star of her era) and in the process trying to overdo it in some scenes. She does too many things with her eye brows, in fact, all her expressions call for some action from her eye brows. So, watching her in some scenes, you get a feel of a Jim Carrey. In the scenes with Jeeva, the contrast becomes clearer with Jeeva doing it so very naturally and Karthika trying to do all sorts of things with her eyebrow acting. I think she should be fed with a daily dose of films by actors who have reveled in subdued/ zero acting (Vijay, Dhanush, SJ Surya, Ramarajan, Arjun…)
The other itch came from hearing the songs. I can bet on the tips I give to the waiter in the roadside hotel, that, those tunes have been already used in the past by the same music director. I liked the “enamo edo” song but all others are just “remixed versions sans the old lyrics” of some of his older songs.
The biggest itch I got was when I saw a duet coming from nowhere immediately after a bomb blast had wiped off some of the important characters in the film. I thought it was done purposely to make the viewers understand that after great dark hours come greater happy hours, but then it will be an insult to my hardly built intelligence working in the IT industry, if I were to digest that as a fact. Here we are watching many of the characters losing their hands and legs, some even their lives and all of a sudden the director decides to show us a song replete with gigantic sets and the protagonists expressing their love and innermost desires for each other. Phew!! I wish the director gets away with this as all his good work in the rest of the movie goes waste thanks to this sequence. Anyways, I think his editor put in his papers as he was not sent onsite.
So , if you want to spend an evening with your loved ones or potential loved ones or hated ones, Ko is a good option. You can save those extra bucks which you would have to spend otherwise on food, shopping etc. which are getting costlier every passing day thanks to inflation, GDP, IT industry and management graduates. Importantly, you wouldn’t have to feel assaulted on your intelligence after the movie (which I tell you is the latest weapon in the hands of ISI. They finance dumb Indian movies and make sure that we lose our intelligence, so that they can carry out sinister operations in our soil).