Beast Story: A former RAW officer among the hostages at a terrorist-taken mall must foil their plans and prevent the government from releasing a feared terrorist he has imprisoned at great personal cost.
beast rating: In his earlier films, Kolamaavu Kokila and Doctor, director Nelson created situations that would not have come across as funny on paper. Also in Beast he takes a serious background – a hostage situation – and tries to make it funny. But this time he’s far from successful. In fact, the film barely pulls out the laughs where it should have been funny and always makes us laugh when it tries to be a mass hero film.
The film begins promisingly. We get a prologue involving Veera Raghavan (Vijay), a senior RAW officer mentally scarred after a mission to capture a most-wanted terror mastermind. He leaves the organization and tries to get rid of his demons, but then the mall where he is staying with his girlfriend Preethi (Pooja Hegde) is taken over by terrorists. The government negotiator, Althaf Hussain (a lopsided Selvaraghavan), manages to persuade Veera to take on the rescue mission, but can he succeed?
The problem with Beast is that it has a protagonist who is too strong for a mission that never seems challenging. The terrorists hardly seem dangerous (they hardly kill anyone, even when trying to scare the hostages), and the mission hardly seems like a daunting task for a daredevil like Veera. None of the kidnappers have any personality whatsoever, including their leader Saif (Ankur Ajit Vikal). “Innum konjam tough kuduthurukalam,” Veera says to Saif towards the end of the film, only underscoring how weak the antagonist is in the film.
As in Doctor, Nelson gives his protagonist a bunch of weirdos to team up with to take down the terrorists, but unlike in that film, the characters here hardly get enough screen or motivation to be memorable. Only VTV Ganesh manages to generate a few laughs, while the shtick with Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley gets tiresome after a while. The clumsy gangster duo from the other film, Mahali and Kili, also fail to impress this time.
Anirudh tries to add some punch to the scenes with his score, but by the time we come to the end, with lyrics that are only slimmer and never meaner or stronger, even that doesn’t work. The director seems to have relied heavily on his star to carry the film, but with a script that leaves him with little to work with, even Vijay’s star power is limited.
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