[rating:3.5]

Watched Guru with friends in the evening today. Went in expecting it to be a combo of the story of DhiruBhai Ambani(and Reliance) and story of Gail Wayland(from Ayn Rand’s FountainHead). Dont ask me why I thought of the latter but I was pretty right in guessing so. What surprised me was that parts of the movie(esp the Climax) resembled “The Avaiator”.

10 min into the movie and I am in absolute awe of ‘Ratnam Magic’. There is this amazing way of painting a screen that he is brilliant at. The movie’s first half is simply beautifully scenic and for a moment or two you have to hold your breadth to savor the sunset behind the train station or the green fields behind a twirling Ash. This was clearly the best part of the movie.

Another thing that stood out in the movie was the Romance, it was simply sublime. Ratnam has this subtle way of showing love which is just well nice to see :)

Acting wise Abhishek was good. I still think his performance in KANK was his best ever but this is clearly a step in the right direction. I guess you cant expect a single character to get much importance in a Mani Ratnam movie even if its the lead. I would like to see him play a role where he has to carry the entire movie on his shoulders.

Ash was ok, frankly anyone could have played her role. Madhavan was good, but it was a supporting role and he gave it his best. Vidhya Balan came and went on screen a few times. Mithun was the refreshing surprise, It was nice to see him again on the screen.

I did hate the ending, the speech at the end was good and the last line about the “30 second ka munafa” (profit of 30 seconds) was simply brilliant but it almost made no sense plus they did not give closure to Mithun’s and Madhavan’s character…

All in all a decent movie to catch on a nice weekend evening :)