Loyalty, only so much!

Viswasam (Loyalty, விஸ்வாசம், Tamil; 2019)

I was ushered into this movie through word of mouth. The ardent Tamil movie fan who recommended this film allegedly cried through many scenes and promoted it as a good Fathers' Day promotional film as well as to showcase the love between a daughter and her father.

It appears that I am either emotionally blunt or that I have watched way too many movies to appreciate any new ones. It seems that all storylines followed three and four pre-set time-tested formulas. In intermingling plots and changing setting and actors, the moviemakers think they got a winner. Something must be wrong with me. Even though I do not think highly of this film, apparently the film is a certified blockbuster, broken box-office and is approved by the Broadcast Audience Research Council, an organisation that owns and manages a transparent, accurate, and inclusive TV audience measurement system as surpassing many records!

Is it just me or has this story been told and re-told in many presentations generations over? That two people of contrasting background should tie the knot only for one party to discover that mistake has been made. With a child to seal the relationship, later on, they go separate ways. Circumstances require re-kindling of bonds. Ego comes to picture to prevent each party to admit mistakes. Tragedy in the form of threat to life binds all together. This happens with and in spite of humanly impossible feats. We just have to accept the fact, without question, that an oversized greying man could do flips and fight scores of known bad-ass gangsters, be fit enough to wrestle hoodlums despite being in ICU just minutes before the encounter and the jumbling up of time and space in the perspective of the story! The audience is becoming an educated lot. With the ease of information at their disposal, they are becoming well-versed with what the rest of the world has to offer. Loyalty, like the title of the movie, only lasts as long the fun quotient lingers on.

Using the same melancholic tunes, using a soft lens in filming to stir nostalgia and sad, helpless facial expression to kindle emotions only can work so much. The fan base will get fed up and start looking elsewhere for thrills.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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