Movie: Cobra
Rating: 2/5
Banner: Zee Studios and R4 Entertainments
Pour: Vikram, Srinidhi Shetty, Irfan Khan, Roshan Mathew, Mirnalini Ravi and others
Music: AR Rahman
DOP: Bhuvan Srinivasan, Harish Kannan
Editor: John Abraham
Written and directed by: Ajay Gnanamuthu
Release date: August 31, 2022
Vikram hasn’t delivered a solid hit since Shankar’s “I”. Nonetheless, his films are eagerly awaited for his performances. Cobra is his latest film to hit theaters.
Let’s find out its pros and cons.
Story:
A prince in Scotland is killed in church on his wedding day. Another murder of a senior minister takes place in Orissa. No lead on the killer’s identity. Who is carrying out these assassinations?
When an Interpol agent (Irfan Pathan) is on his mission to solve the case, he receives a file from Judith, a young math student from India, who proposes her theory called Cobra about these assassinations.
The agent comes to India. They soon find out that Madhi (Vikram) is behind these murders. He’s a math genius. The rest of the drama is getting to know his reasons for these assassinations.
Artist performances:
Vikram is a national award winning actor. In his long career he gave many memorable performances. But lately he’s been getting monotonous with his tendency to do different getups. “Cobra” is no different. There is nothing extraordinary about him. Those who like him playing “Aparichitudu” will get a piece of it in one scene. That’s it.
The role of “KGF” girl Srinidhi Shetty is poorly written. Your thread with Vikram makes no sense.
Like Vikram, Sarjano Khalid also plays two roles, the younger versions of Vikram. Mirnalini Ravi in a flashback episode is okay.
Roshan Mathew plays a negative role but leaves no impact. Cricketer Irfan Pathan is impressive.
Technical excellence:
The film is assembled at a lush scale. The production design is rich. The cinematography and the action choreography are top notch. AR Rahman’s music is average.
Highlights:
interval rotation
interrogation scene
Disadvantage:
Incoherent script
Illogical sequences
3 hours length
analysis
“Cobra” begins with a series of assassinations that show how skillfully the assassin carried them out. The early scenes arouse interest and intrigue as they take place in different countries. A mathematical genius executing them adds further novelty. Vikram playing this role draws us into the film. The film has brilliant flashes in the beginning when it uses mathematical theories to explain the crimes and assassinations. Some ambitious ideas are also presented.
But the director doesn’t seem happy with these ideas. He has made the simple story of the assassination more complex. Hallucinations, flashback stories, mother feelings, brother feelings and so on are added as the story goes on and on. Aside from “Dhoom 3” style interval bangs, it’s all downhill after that.
At some point the director seems to have forgotten what he wanted to say. The three-hour film stretches in many directions, but never gets where it was originally intended. The last hour is really silly and illogical.
In the beginning we are led to believe that Vikram is doing all these assassinations for one type of company. We get no answer as to why the so-called villain (owner of this corporate entity) is doing what he is doing. His real enmity or connection with Vikram is never established. Lots of links lost in this choppy edit.
Srinidhi Shetty and Vikram’s thread is another messy angle.
In short, “Cobra” is overly long and overly loud. Shortly before the break, the film arouses interest, after which it becomes tedious and boring.
bottom line: Stupid