Arjun, Abhirami and Preity Mukhundhan play a family of karate fighters. They just want to mind their own business and maybe help a helpless person or two. But when a “corporate villain” turns up, they are forced to do what our mass-heroes do. But (thankfully) without the preachiness and the noble-mindedness. And with a lot of solid detailing and solid fun. That’s the quick review. A longer analysis follows, and it may contain spoilers.
The summary of Subash K Raj’s Blast is simple. Rajaram is a karate master, and who better to play him than ‘Action King’ Arjun! The small twist is that the household has an action queen and an action princess, too. Abhirami plays Rajaram’s wife, and Preity Mukhundhan is Nila, the daughter. If you have seen the Pixar film, The Incredibles, the premise is loosely like that. This is a unit of superheroes, with martial arts being the superpower. Rajaram gets a small backstory about his sister that tells us why he wanted Nila to learn self-defence. So when Nila is harassed by a man, for instance, she gives it back to the guy in a nicely choreographed action scene in a car. Elsewhere, she stands up for an old woman who is being exploited. Nila also gets the kind of entry that is usually reserved for our “mass” heroes.
But in general, this family is not out to save the world. They are content to live a quiet life. Blast is filled with bits of dry humour, and one of these is that Nila’s mother wants her to stop getting into fights and get married instead. The result of this request is seen in a fantastic scene set in a pharmacy, where Nila obeys her mother’s wishes – but only until she decides that she’s had enough of obeying her mother. Full marks for the casting! Abhirami’s makeup and styling are distracting in this universe, but as an actor, she more or less delivers. But Blast really belongs to Arjun and Preity. Arjun is wonderful as a soft-spoken man who explodes when required. And Preity, finally, gets a breakout role. She is an action star here. The director knows what he wants from his cast. There’s no unnecessary emoting. Arjun and Preity have the look and manner of people who know that their characters are about action, and not reaction shots. There’s no angry-face about injustice. There’s no sad-face about someone’s plight. There’s just the Zen-mode calmness that something needs to be done.
The director also knows what he wants from his writing. Blast is a near-pure action movie. There is no comedy. Nila does not have a boyfriend. There’s no montage song with Arjun and Abhirami, showing their closeness. The closest we get to a “family moment” is a tiny scene over breakfast. So as the screenplay shows us the family, which includes Vivek Prasanna in a super supporting role as Rajaram’s brother, we get a parallel track about a “corporate villain” and a killer, played by John Kokken and Arjun Chidambaram. This is the only part where the film gives in to generic Tamil-cinema cliches. This generic villain wants to mine for a precious mineral, and this could result in generic danger for a tribal village. We get a generic sentimental montage about the people in this village. We get a generic minister who is corrupt and a generic eco-warrior whose death we can see coming from miles away. We also get an out-of-character speech from Rajaram and Nila about doing generic good for the society at large.
These scenes feel a little off here because Blast is not a Saviour movie. This is about a family that just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. And that’s what’s so refreshing, that there is no major call to action. Things just keep happening and pulling various people into the screenplay in clever ways. But even if the conception of the villain and those under him could have been better, there is enough specificity in the writing to make us forgive these flaws. There’s an early scene between a chain-snatcher and his wife. The way this event pays off is beautiful. It’s how the two parallel tracks of the narrative collide. I liked several small touches – the bit about a jeep with a puncture, the bit with the hundred-rupee note, the bit with the volume of a TV set, the subplot with the cop played by Dileepan, the way in which an old TV set gets replaced, the way a pharmacy is worked into the storyline, and the Drishyam-like plot point (but without the guilt).
Blast could have been shorter. That might have amped up the tension. The dialogues could have been sharper. And some of the staging could have been better. But overall, the film benefits greatly from the moody lighting by cinematographer Arun Radhakrishnan, and the action choreography that is sharply edited by Pradeep E Ragav. We get the simple elegance of a Hong Kong martial arts movie. I also enjoyed the weirdness of Ravi Basrur’s score. With the exception of the odd sitar, he abandons natural instruments for a wild sonic texture that adds to the fun. But what keeps Blast going is the director’s understanding that even an “action movie” needs good writing. It needs twists. It needs character detailing. This is not a collection of slow-motion “mass” scenes. This is a solid screenplay, and with some tweaks to the bad guys and their intentions, Blast could have become a B-movie classic. I, for one, would definitely like to see a sequel.
