Review: Spyder

Film: Spyder

Director: A R Murugadoss

Cast: Mahesh Babu, Rakul Preet Singh, S J Suryah, Bharath, R J Balaji, Jeyaprakash and others

Music: Harris Jeyaraj

Cinematography: Santosh Sivan

First things first. Spyder is a must watch! The film, which starts off on a relatively gentle note, gathers pace in no time. To Murugadoss’s credit, he manages to keep the film’s story gaining in intensity, minute by minute, right till the very end.

Shiva (Mahesh Babu), who is a brilliant professional, is also an ace shooter employed with the Intelligence Bureau (IB). At the IB, his task, like many others, is to tap into phone calls of people being deemed suspicious and dangerous to society by senior officers. But then, Shiva likes to keep scanning calls from the public too to find if there are anti-social elements and potential threats to society. He is an efficient programmer and his software programmes are designed to pick up words like Help’ in conversations or words that sound like threats and draw his attention to those having such conversations.

Should he have chosen to, he could have got a job that is several notches higher up his current position in the IB. However, Shiva loves to be in the lower levels of the Intelligence Bureau. Especially, the present position he is in. That’s because he believes the job he does gives him the power to stop crime from happening, rather than other positions which come into the picture only after a crime is committed.

One stormy night, Shiva hears a distress call. A young girl, who is in fear, calls her friend, asking her to come over to her place as she is scared to stay alone. The young girl says that she feels something or somebody is in the house. She fears there are spirits in the house. The friend dismisses her fear, asks her to lock all the doors and windows tightly and go to sleep.

Shiva, like the girl’s friend, doesn’t take her pleas too seriously. He, however, asks a friend, a female cop, who lives in the neighbourhood of the girl in distress, to go and check on her. Having assigned her the task, he forgets about it. The next morning, Shiva gets to hear of both women having been butchered by a murderer. The killing is so brutal that their body parts have been chopped and mixed. The IB officer is stunned and full of remorse. Then, his remorse turns into anger at the murderer and he sets out to nab the culprit. Soon, several skeletons begin to tumble and the whole city gasps in horror as Shiva begins to unearth a very complicated case that had until then been kept well under wraps…

Mahesh Babu as Shiva is perfect. The man seems to have been born to play this role. By and large, his body language, his expressions and his dialogue delivery are all apt for this role. The handsome actor charms as the young IB techinician, who is swift when it comes to solving crimes and finding solutions. The developments of the story begin to happen at a breakneck speed beyond a point and with it, the intensity too increases. Rakul Preet, who plays a friend with benefits of Mahesh Babu, has done a good job but then, the investigation part is so thrilling that it makes the romantic sequences less appealing. Nevertheless, Rakul plays her part well.

Two other wonderful artistes have contributed immensely to the success of Spyder. One is S J Suryah and the other is Bharath. Both actors have done a fantastic job in the film and it is because of their commanding presence that the plot acquires the seriousness and importance that it so richly deserves.

Santosh Sivan’s camera is just brilliant. The ace cinematographer helps director Murugadoss tell his story more forcefully and emphatically. Murugadoss knows what the mood of the audience is. He knows that in today’s era, to make a film work, women need to be praised and he does that in his own way in a crucial part of the film. However, this small attempt of his comes across as being very unrealistic and artificial. On the brighter side, Murugadoss, through this story, makes a very pertinent point. He points out that humanitarian consideration and humaneness in general is coming down in us as a society and warns us that this could result in grave problems. On the whole, Spyder works big time! A must watch!