Bigil/Whistle Review: An Entertainer with a Significant Message!

Written and directed by Atlee Kumar, Thalapathy Vijay’s 63rd film, Bigil also stars Nayanthara as the female lead, Jackie Shroff, Vivek and Yogi Babu as the supporting cast in a 178-minute long sports/action drama. Based around quite a few themes varying from an emotional father-son relationship, women empowerment and second chances, Bigil appeals to its core audience and is overall a delightful entertainer.

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The plot kicks off with Michael (Vijay), a hero of the masses, the knight for his neighbourhood and an ex-football player who is now involved in fighting rival gangs as a full-time job. Eventually, when his friend, who now is a coach for a women’s football team gets injured accidentally, he requests Michael to take the mantle and make their dream a reality. The remainder of the film tells Michael’s story, his emotional past, and how life presents him with a second chance to make things right.

Outweighing the negatives, there are quite a few things to like in Bigil . And it ultimately helped the movie in the long-run primarily because of the three-hour runtime. So, let’s start with the positives. Excluding the in-between commercial aspects, the core storyline and the soul of the film are compelling and heartwarming at the same time. And the best part about it is Director Atlee plots his moves and times his scenes at the right time and has the grip over his audience. He makes his prime moments speak visually on-screen and ensures that they spark a fast and elated reaction from the viewer.

Highlighting a series of significant issues or norms regarding women and their place in society, Atlee, also provides some imperative social commentary and makes an effort to showcase those scenes as loud as possible. Additionally, the supporting concepts with respect to making the best out of your second opportunities and forgiveness are displayed decently in brief, but impactful sequences which once again caught the eye of the audience at least in the auditorium that I’m watching.

However, the idea of pushing forward the main storyline with added commercial elements doesn’t work in the movie through and through. The half-baked romance angle between Vijay and Nayanthara, villains with no-real intelligence or common sense, one too many action scenes, were all sacrificed for the sake of commercializing the movie. And the majority of the first half didn’t do the film much favours. Predominantly because of these clichéd scenes which not only prolonged the runtime but also hurt the movie’s chances of being a perfect entertainer.

Bigil also shines the brightest as far as presenting the character of Vijay goes. Despite his usual “cool guy” tropes, he commands the screen with his charisma and portrays both his characters well. The slow-mo scenes felt excessive, but they’re good enough to make his fans go bananas.

On the other hand, Lady Superstar Nayanthara granted that she plays a supporting character in the second half, felt largely underutilized for her calibre. Her chemistry with Vijay works, but, as I indicated before, their love relationship and the comedy scenes involving her marriage did not serve any purpose for the film. The remaining cast including the women from the football team did their part, had brief moments to shine, and complemented the narrative decently.

Technically, I’m satisfied with what I saw on-screen, and it unfair to nitpick the quite a few CGI problems, however, it is not bad at all. The cinematography by G. K. Vishnu was very eye-catching. The terrific use of vivid, vibrant colours, perfectly-lit scenes and the scope of the entire film felt grand and justified its tone. Also worth mentioning is Rahman’s terrific background score which only helped the movie speak without much dialogue.

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Nevertheless, Bigil is an entertainer which primarily caters to its core audience and the millions of Vijay admirers worldwide. Director Atlee understands what the audience expect from a commercial movie and checks all the boxes in regards to providing them with all-inclusive entertainment. Conversely, the movie also suffers from a myriad of avoidable problems, but, I’m not complaining either, only because it took time to address a stack of problems involving women. Therefore, I left the auditorium happy with a smile on my face.

Rating – 3.25/5 | Grade – B

Images via AGS Entertainment

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