"Billa", the third remake of Hindi hit "Don", fails
to boost Ajith's sagging career despite all the tricks in the director's
bag.
Amitabh Bachchan starrer "Don" (1978) and its Tamil remake
"Billa", featuring Ranjnikanth in 1980, were major events,
thanks to the screen presence of the two superstars.
Recently, Shah Rukh Khan did his own take in Farhan Akhtar's remake
of the same film titled "Don - The Chase Begins Again".
Director Vishnuvardhan, of course, has given Ajith top billing and
the corniest lines like "I am the original Thala (the star's popular
nickname that triggers wolf whistles)", reducing other senior stars
like Prabhu to caricatures, packing enough car chases to overtake motor
sport channels, William Wong's great action sequences, Nirav Shah's
excellent cinematography to accord the proceedings a touch of class,
scantily clad females gallivanting on the screen.
One can go on and on but despite all this, "Billa" flops
because it lacks the zing that makes a film tick.
There are dozens of extras, Malaysian females of Indian origin, and
thousands of bullets spent to destroy loud sets.
All of them have toiled to produce a movie that is as interesting a
prospect as a snifter containing decanted ditch water laced with juice
from rotten lemons plucked a year ago.
The other productions - based on the script of the Bollywood duo of
Salim-Javed that gave birth to four siblings or movies based on one
basic idea - had outstanding characters. But characters like the golden-hearted
safe breakers - Pran, the late 'Coconut' Srinivasan and finally Arjun
Rampal - are conspicuous by their absence in "Billa".
So, we have an unlikely tale of an evil gangster, Billa (Ajith), being
bumped off by a conscientious cop Jai, played by Prabhu who seems to
have lost his voice and screen presence, and a petty thief and occasional
dancer, Ajith in the second role, trying to net a drug lord and gunrunner
Jagdish (Rahuman) with the help of a moll high on the adrenalin to get
even with the assassin of her near and dear one.
In between, there are motor stunts and plain fisticuffs enough to give
anyone involved multiple fractures in the fingers and some good music
by Yuvan Shankar Raja.
Editor Sreekar Prasad tries to infuse some life into the proceedings
with the use of his pruning blades alright, but he too can only work
with the canned shots available.
A green Malaysia looks enchanting, but it should have a better calling
as a tourist resort than as the backdrop of a movie.
Attempts on the part of producers to tinker with past hits and making
guinea pigs out of stars will come a cropper unless they are able to
aptly evolve the themes with changing times.
And the tragedy with Ajith is that he needed a hit very badly after
another failed essay to duplicate the efforts of another hit from another
language in recent times.
Sadly Vishnuvardhan (and probably the actor's own overconfidence) has
let "Billa" down very badly.
If Rajnikanth's "Billa" was a milestone in his career, its
remake starring Ajith is a millstone around the neck of the actor and
the producer.
