Monday, November 16, 2009

2001 minus 2.


1999.

My good friend co-directed this picture as well as acted in it. So my review doesn’t mean a heck of a lot. I liked it. What can I say.

That being said, I will try to give a review that is for average people, and be as objective as I can be.

1999 is about Tamil gangs during the 90’s. A lot of young Tamil males felt that it was important to their survival, and culture to join gangs. They felt at home with their gang and it was more like a family. In the 90’s a peace treaty was formed among the gangs but at the beginning of this film, Jeevan (brother to Kumar head of one of the big gangs) kills the brother of the other big gang. Kumar learns of this and fears that the treaty will be broken, and there will be war on the streets.

Kumar is a nice guy (as nice as a gang leader can be) and doesn’t really want to be this leader anymore. His posse tells him to frame someone for the killing so Jeevan wont go to jail. Kumar, against his better judgement, frames his best friend Anpu.

The story is really about Anpu, and Akilan, two former best friends turned casual acquaintances because Anpu joined Kumar’s gang, and Akilan is nice schoolboy. The story shows their lives in a parallel style of editing. We see them pass by each other and then we follow Anpu. Later, we see the same exact scene where they pass each other, only this time we follow Akilan.

The story is interesting and I liked the style. The music was killer too (both songs and score), and I really didn’t know what would happen at the end. The “love story” is an interesting one because it only exists in the minds of Anpu and Akilan. They both love Geetha, but none of them have told her yet. Geetha (who is not shown in the film at all) doesn’t know that they like her, and we don’t see her choose. This is interesting in the sense that we (the audience) can make up our own dream girl Geetha and think about how we would approach her?

That being said, the pacing was a bit slow at times, and at a 2 hour mark, I felt that some stuff could’ve been cut. But it never gets boring, the musical score really helps, and all in all I think a lot of non-Tamil people would like it.

Check it out.
Ill be buying it of course!

*/* (no rating since I know the film maker)

J-Man

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