ducing a woman's intelligence to investigat- ing husbands' affairs and studying eve teasers' intentions! I mean, really? Compared to this trash, Bahubali is miles ahead in its thinking. I expected too much from this Murugadas and Mahesh- babu flick I guess. I should have known bet- ter. But yes Spyder is better than Arjun Reddy, which is a sick, sick movie by the way. Stay miles away from this one. Does Spyder capture your imagina- tion? To a certain extent, yes it does. The first half has some surprises and minor twists and Bhairava keeps you tense and scared, but the second half turns monoto- nous, insular and linear. By then I was itch- ing to get out. Music is all right with a couple of catchy numbers. Choreography grabs your attention and I did enjoy the dance numbers. Nothing much for the heroine (Rakul Preet Singh) to do except sing and dance. She looks stunning though. For the good part: Surya as Bhairava is brilliant. Even the child Bhairava is very convincing, more so actually. Mahesh looks good and has a boyish charm, dances well, delivers controlled acting. For the most part, at least in the first half you will actu- ally enjoy the film that comes across as sharp and bright though its just snooping in high tech looking buildings. The back- story of the villain engages your interest and the dance numbers have your foot tap- ping. The second half lets you down as it be- comes slow and monotonous. It ends with a free moral message from the hero: Help- ing people without them asking and not ex- pecting anything in return is real humanity. However contradicting himself, our hero snoops and saves (not really free for the common man who loses his privacy) and in return gets a beautiful woman as his play- mate (so he does get something in return). This is not a spy movie at all, but a SNOOPY one. A Snooper would have been a better title. My rating: 2.5/5.
iron rod stuck through his stomach and in a semi-conscious state. I didn't know gov- ernment officers are so multi-talented. In addition, he is also an amazing human being, son and lover (as the heroine keeps calling him with offers of good sex). With its superb seemingly modern technology, extraordinary office buildings and equipment (very unrealistic in Indian scenario), a handsome upper caste hero chasing an obviously poor, low caste villain born and brought up in a graveyard, Spy- der has its patriarchal, misogynistic values intact. In addition, this 40 something hero is paired with a beautiful 18 something 'doctor' heroine who is lusting for him, a twisted treat to most of the men out there. These days heroes want nothing less than doctors, engineers, lawyers as their pining heroines who lust after them. Salman Khan had a psychiatrist and a wrestler as his heroines in a couple of his movies. But this professional status does not increase the in- telligence of the lady in the movie. She is still portrayed as a brainless bimbette. Story is pretty much linear and we can kind of guess what will happen next. No surprises. The rolling boulder on the road (though unnecessary and unreal) was well shot and so is the blasting and devastation of the hospital building. The fight on the giant wheel doesn't impress. In one interesting scene Shiva uses sev- eral homemakers to apprehend the killer by aiding and abetting them to climb roofs and jump walls. (This part is confusing in its theory but lets not go into logic) After all the work done by these brave ladies, its strange that the director doesn't have a mo- ment to stop and bestow them the praise they deserved, which would have made the women in the audience happy. But Muru- gadas doesn't pause to give that joy to his lady audience. He's fully aware it would be a waste of time, as he knows most of his viewers would be male. Once manipulated for the hero's purpose, these women are discarded and forgotten. Instead the hero gets all the praise and adoration for the idea (of capitalizing on these ladies). In another scene, hero patronizingly describes a woman's intelligence thus: "Women are very smart; without turning behind they can tell exactly where the eyes of men are lingering on their bodies. By just looking at their husbands face they can guess the message fromWhatsapp," etc, re-
The hero (a good vigilant) makes it his living to be an official peeping Tom into the private lives of unassuming people and "saves" any who in accordance to his mind needs saving. He is an army in himself like gaurakhshaks, anti-Romeo-squads, or any other moral police. He randomly listens in on any calls that have words like fear, scare, etc, and checks if they are ok. All callers are at his mercy and nothing is left private. He is given this freedom (with a caveat "don't cheat") to a certain extent by the Govern- ment's IB (whatever that stands for) and he takes undue advantage and assumes full control of his edgy power in the name of saving his people. Both the protagonist and antagonist of Spyder have strange obsessions: Shiva wants to save people from distress that goes far beyond fair/unfair, right/wrong; Bhairava wants to kill and revel in the sor- row of the grieving closed ones. While the hero's obsession is aided, abetted and glorified by the director using hero's good looks, good intentions, suave (?) computer graphics, and a government job that encourages his sly snooping on clueless commoners, the villain's obsession is marred by poverty, low-caste depriva- tion, and lack of psychiatric treatment. Both if you ask me, fit best in an asylum. This story is not a personal revenge drama as is the case in the most of the hero driven roles, but about a man, Shiva (Ma- heshbabu), obsessed with saving people in both real and imagined dangers. He is a man in power, and has all the facilities in his hands to snoop, thanks to Aadhar infor- mation, and uses it to tap cell phones, what- sapp, and emails to save those in trouble. In the process he encounters a highly danger- ous and a psychopathic serial killer, Bhairava (SJ Surya) who enjoys death and its aftermath grief of the family. He is born and brought up in a graveyard. Soul- wrenching wailing at any death becomes his lullaby. If none come to graveyard with a dead body, he proceeds to kill people him- self to enjoy his lullaby of wails. The rest of the movie is about the Shiva playing cat and mouse with Bhairava, wait- ing for his chance to trap him. The hero is not only an investigative officer, but apparently also a sharp sniper who can shoot the villain with such accu- racy as not to kill him but just to injure him when he himself is suffering from a heavy
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November 2017
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