Karthi is a hero who has a very good following in Telugu states despite being a Tamil hero. He arrived with ‘Sardar’ last year and scored a hit. He is getting a lot of hits lately and Karthi’s latest flick ‘Japan’ has created a good buzz with its trailer and other promotional content. Being Karthi’s 25th film, the expectations were quite high on the movie and let us see how it turned out.

Story:

Japan Muni (Karthi) is a renowned gold thief. He grew up as an orphan and grows on to become a huge robber and his crimes become famous all over the country. He troubles the police departments of all states. He leaves his mark after every robbery and even makes movies based on his life. He makes them run in a theatre for months together. He is in coitus with some police officers as well. One day, Japan gets accused of stealing gold worth 200 crores from a Minister’s jewellery shop. With the evidence and style of robbery suggesting that it is Japan who did that, police from all states go in search of him. We get to know that someone is copying Japan’s style and the latter is getting chased by police now. What happens now? How will Japan catch the real criminal? All these questions will be answered in the movie.

Analysis:

Karthi earned huge craze in Telugu as well as Tamil market due to his versatile script selection. He is making sure that each and every film of his will be completely different. Right from his first film ‘Paruthiveeran’, he is following the same pattern and his 25th film ‘Japan’ released today. Looking at the impressive trailer and Karthi’s crazy look, one predicts that ‘Japan’ is going to be have something unique and interesting. But we are left wondering when that surprise element or something special arrives as we wait for two and half hours very patiently. There is something majorly missing in this movie. The team picked an age-old story and tried to cover it up with a lot of style and glitz but the film offers nothing different. Barring a few comedy scenes and punches, the movie is very ordinary and basic.

When a hero is presented as a huge thief, it is quite common to show the backstory of his character where unavoidable circumstances lead him to become a criminal. The director treated it like something out-of-the-box by holding on to it until the end and revealing the emotional flashback story in the climax. But the sentiment doesn’t work out at all. Coming to comedy, ‘Japan’ starts off in a very engaging manner. While it is very routine to show how a robber escapes the police despite all their efforts, showing hero as someone who makes his own movies and screening them in a theatre for months makes things quite funny. But one cannot expect people to be satisfied by these and ignore the entire story. A solid story and a compelling screenplay is needed for a film to do well and ‘Japan’ fails in that aspect.

The entire story of ‘Japan’ revolves around one robbery. With someone copying the style of Japan and robbing a jewelry shop, the hero needs to find out who did it. This is the story and one can say that many successful movies were made on way thinner storylines but it is tough when the film is neither a thriller nor a comedy entertainer. There is not one strong character in the film other than the hero. With villains becoming jokers right at the start, we don’t take them seriously at any point in the film. The thread showing how people around the hero betray him has been used many times before. Also, the director’s attempt to parallelly run an innocent man’s track in order to evoke emotions did not give the desired result. While Karthi is doing his best to entertain, the confusing narration and boring chase scenes bring down the movie’s graph drastically. ‘Japan’ tests the patience of the audience in the second half. The biggest minus of the film is the track around heroine which ran for nearly 30 minutes. There is no need for that character in this film. With the audience finding it tough to understand what the director wants to say, the dragging climax becomes unbearable. ‘Japan’ is definitely a Karthi film that you want to forget in no time.

Performance:

Karthi is a wonderful actor who brings his own flavour into any character he plays. He is an expert in making the audiences connect with his role. He worked very hard in trying to do the same for ‘Japan’ as well. But his character lacked strength on paper itself. His modulation sounds funny at the start but gets a bit on your nerves as the movie progresses. Even a stellar performer like Karthi couldn’t save this movie which became too boring after a point.

There is nothing to talk about Anu Emmaneul’s character. Her screen time is also very low and she had no scope for performing as well. However, she looked quite glamorous on the screen. Sunil appeared in a different getup but there is nothing fresh about his role. The artist who played the role of Japan’s trusted man did quite well. KS Ravikumar and other actors did decent jobs.

Technicians:

There is nothing special in GV Prakash Kumar’s songs but his background score is very good. It improved the film a lot. Ravi Varman’s cinematography is quite stylish and the visuals appear very attractive. The production values are also amazing. Rakendumouli did not just translate Tamil into Telugu. He managed to add a local touch to the dialogues which is appreciable. Writer-director Raju Murugan fails to make people understand what he wanted to say with ‘Japan’. A few comedy scenes and punches worked out in the movie but there is nothing new in the narration. He failed to do any magic with his screenplay as well. There is no strong conflict point in the movie.

Verdict: All Style & Hype But No Substance At All!