A man’s girlfriend killed. In the same incident the man is hit in the head leading to a rare condition where he just remembers everything till the incidents. He cannot make new memories after that. He has a very short term memory where he cannot remember anything that happened few minutes ago.
The last thing he remembers is his girl friend being killed before his eyes. He wants to find the person who killed his girl friend but cannot remember the facts that could lead him to the killer. So he takes photos from his Polaroid camera of places, clues and places. He also tattoos on his body the facts about the killer. He writes notes to himself so he knows what he is doing.
Written and directed by AR Murugadoss, the Tamil movie “Ghajini” is inspired by Christopher Nolan’s “Memento “. I would call it an inspiration because except the central idea of short term memory loss, everything in Ghajini changes. While “Memento” is a psychological thriller, “Ghajini” wants to be more that that and becomes a full fledged masala film.
Ghajini is made specially for the superstar hungry Indian audience. Ghajini is not “Memento”. “Memento” dealt with short term memory loss much better than “Ghajini”. “Ghajini” does not even touch the idea of short-term memory loss.
Ghajini has a larger than life hero almost like superman who can kill any body with his bare hands. While “Memento’s” Lenny had the same short-term memory problem, he acted quite normally even being apologetic about his medical condition, “Ghajini’s” Sanjay behaves like a demented mind. Once a sane person, he now behaves as if he has totally lost his mind.
Ghajini is about superstar Surya and as expected he is larger than life hero doing everything from singing, dancing and fighting goons. Ghajini can be termed more as a action film than a thriller. The secret is revealed at the intermission and the second half is just lots of action with some very bad acting from the second heroine, Nayantara. The climax in fact is hurried and boring.
That is the biggest negative of “Ghajini”. While “Memento” arrived at a surprising climax, “Ghajini” arrives at a action-packed climax.
I may not know Tamil and maybe missed out on some subtitles but I haven’t got the meaning of Ghajini yet. A R Murugadoss.
I may be wrong in comparing “Ghajini” and “Memento” because these two films are way apart in terms of the treatment, story, screenplay and even direction. It may be an impressive Tamil film by Indian standard but it has still many flaws.
What lacks in story and screenplay, the writer makes up in grand sets, fights and dances. He holds on the story well. I expected something to happen dramatic in the second half but then it became a simple predictable revenge drama.
Surya can’t help but play the character which I guess was written to be shown as confused because of the memory loss. He is shown angry about lots of people and he does well as a action star.
Asin in the first half does what a heroine is supposed to do. Dance and smile and be merry and die which is not supposed to do.
Nayantara hams and hams bad. Pradeep Singh Rawal is the villian and that’s it. “Ghajini” is a good action movie and becomes intersting because of the short term memory loss of the hero but it could have been more interesting. The story had potential of more twists.
Rating: 6.5/10
Full2 Faltu 