Cobra Movie Review : It’s exhausting to see this Vikram movie
Demonte Colony, Ajay Gnanamuthu’s first film, is a minimalist horror thriller. He then transitioned to the commercial genre with Imaikkaa Nodigal. His third feature, Cobra, is a massive and ambitious production with a sophisticated plot and an action-packed story.
Madhiazhagan, a brilliant mathematician played by Vikram, begins carrying out homicides that have the potential to change the world. Despite a significant security presence, he murders the Prince of Scotland. The Indian security apparatus is shocked when he assassinates the Chief Minister of Odisha (actually, it may not be that baffled, considering how the CBI behaves). The Interpol chooses to pursue him, but a mysterious hacker—whose identity isn’t revealed until the intermission—seems to be one step ahead of both the assassin and the Interpol.
It can be challenging to keep track of the film’s extensive travels around the world, but in the early portions of the first half, we see university students from the Department of Criminology discussing topics that the average person would learn from reading a newspaper article about a high-profile murder. The ostentatious staging of the scene captures “Cobra’s” aimlessness and occasionally vacuity, as its narrative is never fully communicated. Even as the credits are rolling, a significant figure is saying something that can help us comprehend the protagonist and his complicated life more fully, assuming we have the patience to care.
This leads us to “Cobra’s” emotional beats, which are hardly ever developed in a way that can emote the viewer. The outstanding representation of a mentally unstable individual by Chiyaan Vikram is hardly improved by the appropriate script. The present might have seemed moving if the memories, which are recounted in sections, had been narrated adequately.
Beyond a certain point, the Hollywood tropes don’t really add much value, such as casting the protagonist as a flawed genius or setting the action in multiple nations. The dramatisation suffers when the assassin isn’t using his or her mastery of disguise.
There is an action scene in the second half while it is pouring severely. It serves as an illustration of how a good plot and respectable execution may work together. It is impossible to talk anything about the scene without giving away the biggest spoiler of all. This gets us to the movie’s primary flaw. Due to the manner the narration develops in the second half of the latest Telugu film “Sita Ramam,” the interval twist involving Sita can be explored without significantly detracting from the audience’s interest. That’s not the case with “Cobra” since the bloated proceedings make things appear much more complicated than they actually are.
There are always too many responses and numerous beats that allude to unspoken themes. Only exhaustion remains at the conclusion. This clumsy storytelling is made worse by inane details like these: Even Interpol has been observed getting assistance from a criminology student!
Another character in “Cobra” is a corporate executive named Rishi (Roshan Mathew), whose depiction and character characterisation turn the movie into a typical Kollywood blockbuster actioner rather than a necessary tale.