Review – Hero

Film: Hero
Director: P S Mithran
Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Arjun Sarja, Kalyani Priyadarshan, Robo Shankar, Ivana and Abhay Deol
Camera: George C Williams
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Rating: 3 stars

One can trust director P S Mithran to come up with content that is socially relevant and significant. If in his first film Irumbu Thirai, Mithran spoke about the dangers of technology in general and the risks that you are subjecting yourself to by owning a smartphone, in Hero, he deals with our fault-ridden education system that is failing our youngsters miserably.

Shakthi (Sivakarthikeyan) is a part-time middle-man and a part-time counterfeit agent. His primary job is to help greedy educational institutions (Read: Engineering colleges) rake in the moolah by selling their seats to helpless parents desperate to provide good education to their children. The educational institutions pay Shiva a hefty commission for luring gullible parents to them. Occasionally, he also prints counterfeit degree certificates to sell to those seeking degrees, either to enhance their chances of a promotion or to get a job.

Shakthi’s life is peaceful until one day, Mathi (Ivana), a young intelligent girl, who is termed an average student by this education system that the society believes to be robust, expresses a desire to study aeronautics.

As he considers her to be his younger sister, he tries pleading with all the colleges that he has helped earn crores by cheating gullible parents to offer her one free seat. They refuse. To them, nothing matters but money. But Mathi’s father is a poor man and he cannot afford to pay the sum they demand. It is at this time that Mathi takes him to her school which is far away from the city.

The school is completely different from the educational system that the society follows. Every student in this school is someone who has been rejected by the education system in society. However, this school has taught them to be scientists and innovators. Each one has inventions to his or her credit that can revolutionise the world and resolve major problems. Mathi too has an invention to her credit. Her invention is an engine that uses seawater as its fuel.

Shakthi is thrilled. He tells Mathi that if this invention of hers is shown to the universities, they are sure to grant her a seat in the aeronautical engineering section. Against the advice of Moorthy (Arjun), Mathi’s teacher who runs this school, Shakthi takes Mathi’s invention to a bunch of universities. What happens then leaves him shocked and determined to make a change…

Mithran makes some really compelling and pertinent points about our education system. He points out that some incredible inventions have been made by youngsters dismissed as failures by an education sytem that is more intent on churning out knowledgeable slaves to work for manipulative corporates. He points out that the vast majority of this society is content to learn and reproduce what is expected of them without asking questions, so long as they are assured of salaries and a comfortable lifestyle.

It shows the rot in the education system. It highlights how greedy and ruthless corporates ensure that the innovations of young minds don’t get the attention they deserve. It shines the light on how corporates, in connivance with the government, look to keep really beneficial low-cost innovations that can alleviate the miseries of the public, especially the oppressed classes, from reaching them so as to continue to have a market for their high cost products.

For all of this, Mithran deserves to be congratulated. Even more impressive is the fact that at the end, he presents a list of such real life innovators and scientists. Interestingly, most of these wonderful scientists who have made earth-shattering inventions were considered either average or failures in school! What is more heartening is the fact that they made these inventions when they were in school itself! If Hero works, it is primarily for this reason.

Arjun, who came up with a splendid performance in Irumbu Thirai, repeats the feat in Hero as well. In fact, it is his performance that outshines everybody else’s in this film.

Ivana as Mathi is another feather in the cap of Hero. Her performance is hard to miss and she really breathes life into the character.

Sivakarthikeyan comes up with a brilliant performance in the first half. However, in the second half, he turns a superhero for a while and that is where the problem arises. He somehow does not fit the bill of a superhero. Be it his body language, the postures, the gestures or the dialogues — not of them convince you that it is a superhero that you are looking at. In fact, one wonders why the director even had to consider bringing in the superhero concept into the film. This film would have worked on the sheer strength of the message that the film was trying to convey.

Kalyani Priyadarshan doesn’t impress. The young actress isn’t convincing as Meera. One is unsure if she has dubbed for her role herself. Irrespective of what the case may be, her voice and her expressions simply don’t seem to be in sync. The result: her expressions look artificial and put on.

Yuvan Shankar Raja’s background score is apt for the film. However, none of the songs are good enough to have retention value.

This apart, Mithran’s attempt to emasculate men is disgusting. The heroine, while teaching the hero about how men should propose, describes ‘men who lower their eyes while looking to propose to them in shyness before the women make them regain their courage’ as being cute. Sigh!

On the whole, Hero has both pluses and minuses.Does it make sense? It does. Does it entertain? It does, but only in some parts. Is it relatable? It is. The decision of whether you should go and watch it is yours!