Jailer Is Vinayakan's Overdue Victory Lap

Vinayakan's Jailer Glory Has Been A Long Time Coming

Part of almost 40 films, in roles small and significant, it is over the past five years that the Malayalam film industry has really given the viscerally gifted actor what he deserves. Neelima Menon writes.

IN AN EARLY SCENE from Jailer, as Varman — played by Vinayakan — is about to be bludgeoned by Rajinikanth’s Muthuvel Pandian, he quickly fishes out his phone to reveal a secret he knows will unsettle the unflappable Muthuvel. Vinayakan, lean and unassuming, clad in a lungi and sleeveless t-shirt, sporting strands of large black beads, and with his startling ash eyes that seem to pierce into your psyche, is frightening as Varman.

In retrospect, Varman is a typical, one-dimensional, irredeemable Rajinikanth antagonist, but it is what Vinayakan brings to the table that lends heft to the character. In Malayalam and broken Tamil, Vinayakan breathes fire into the psyche of a villain who casually tosses his victims into sulphuric acid and can sit back and hack a body into pieces — all without batting an eyelid. His body language is unbridled, his eyes are hypnotic, and he has a swagger that’s terrifying. In Jailer, Vinayakan doesn’t allow the inimitable aura of Rajinikanth to overwhelm him. On the contrary, he matches the superstar in every scene: dialogue for dialogue, glare for glare, swag for swag.

In a film studded with some of the biggest pan-India and southern film industry stars, Vinayakan emerges as dynamite. Here is an actor without the baggage of stardom, required only to ace the darker shades of grey, who seems to be his own man, undeterred by the might of even of Rajinikanth. Who really is Vinayakan? From debuting as a Michael Jackson double in a Mohanlal film to a National Award-winning actor, we're diving deep into his trajectory.

Why Chiranjeevi's Legacy Isn't Served By Bholaa Shankar...

...But Rajinikanth's is, by Jailer. Karthik Keramalu writes.

THE success of Jailer can be partly attributed to the seed that Rajinikanth planted at the beginning of his career. On the flip side, Bholaa Shankar in Telugu, featuring Chiranjeevi in the eponymous role, has failed to evoke a similar sense of euphoria. Remakes are always a hit-and-miss affair. And they tend to hurt the makers more often than not because outsmarting the standard set by the original — or even matching it — is tough. Moreover, comparisons are inevitable.

Ever since Chiranjeevi made his comeback as a principal actor in Khaidi No. 150 (2017), he’s faced one upset or another. The younger actors, who have the capacity to pull in enormous crowds, aren’t vying for his position; they have their own boxes to tick. It’s only Chiranjeevi who’s competing with himself, or rather his former self. Vedalam (2015), the Tamil movie upon which Bholaa Shankar is based, is just about a passable action drama. It shouldn’t have been remade in the first place.

Meanwhile, this is how Rajinikanth hits a home run: His recent movies barring Jailer, haven’t won him much praise, but he hasn’t stopped keeping an eye on promising filmmakers to collaborate with. There’s hope in the direction that he chooses to tread, whereas there’s trepidation around the cloud that hovers above Chiranjeevi’s head. That said, both superstars are entirely capable of retaining their fan base even while churning out turkeys.

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How Pop Culture Is Skewering The True Crime Podcast Industry

From Only Murders In The Building to Vengeance and Based On A True Story, self-aware shows and movies are presenting meta critiques of the exploitation of true crime. Manik Sharma writes.

“WHEN a civilisation collapses, only the tiniest fragments remain,” says Quentin Sellers, played by a deliciously wicked Ashton Kutcher, in a scene from the indie film Vengeance (2022). Sellers is a record producer, who has moved to Texas to record… not necessarily the next platinum-selling artist… but to sort of capture the fragmented truth of a country that is now identified through homologous markers of ‘virality’ and ‘genre’.

“Make recordings. Real people. Not what people think they already know and want to hear. Real people,” Sellers says, after being asked just how he would go about reclaiming an entire civilisation through its fragments. It’s a conversation that alludes to the booming culture of real-life documentation, specifically podcasts, through the lens of deprivation that has now — ironically — spawned an entire genre of storytelling.

As Only Murders In The Building has returned for its third season with a prestigious cast — Meryl Streep is part of the line-up — it’s worth evaluating how this inquiry into our true crime podcasting obsession began, and what it says about the nature of our interaction with media and murder.

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