Raajjeyam (2002)

I've been searching for eons, trying to avoid ever recommendation that said "Why would you watch his movies? The best scenes is available on YouTube!". But that's not me, no Sir. Imagine trying to be a fan of world weird cinema and only seen a few seconds of Banglar King Kong on YouTube? That's not fandom. Fandom is finding these movies and watching every damn minute of them. When it comes to the legendary Captain Vijayakanth, still a very popular actor and politician, it's been a bitch finding DVDs, but finally through some obscure webstore I've already forgotten the name of, I found Raajjeyam! It's mostly famous for showing up on blog-lists over the most over-the-top fight scenes in Indian movies, and that's what people outside India have seen so far. Until now.

What's so special with Vijayakanth is his appearance:

To be fair, he was kinda cute in that slightly chubby Indian way in the seventies and early eighties, but his potbelly, lobster-eyes and double cheeks is nowadays very absurd and colourful trademarks for being an action star. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I love when people just refuse to understand that their best years is behind them and continues to act like they're twenty again.

I pulled a joke on Twitter that no one appreciated: "The reason why Captain Vijayakanth have two cheeks is that he's hidden an extra fist in the lower one". Laugh, goddammit!

Vijayakanth (I'm gonna call him Captain for from now) is more or less Jesus, according to the opening musical number (can't describe that ego trip, you have to see it for yourself) and he's also the owner of security firm. The Captain is probably THE single best catcher of criminals in his part of India and uses all his fighting skills, often totally over-the-top martial arts and strenght (he stomps in the water during a fight down in the sewers and flushes up the baddies by the power of his stomp!). He also has a very nice mute brother who's in love with a girl who don't want him. Anyway, through some totally unbelievable circumstances his mute brother ends up in prison and gets mixed in some serious business that... well, I'm not gonna tell you, because Raajjeyam is so filled with stupid (yes, stupid) twists and unlikely storylines that it's hard to understand. It all ends with the Captain going on a revenge-rampage!

To understand Raajjeyam you have to understand the Captain. This is, and I'm most of his movies is, a long love letter written by the Captain to himself. Without any shame at all. The ego-orgy in this movie is so fantastic that Tom Cruise comes off as a shy and submissive person in comparison. Captain is the most perfect human being in the world, he's sensitive and cries, but still knows how to round-kick twenty people at the same time. He's like Chuck Norris but with talent and charisma. And yes, you're correct: he can't fight, but pretends to, which means he's superior in every way to the movie-molester Norris.

Actually, Captain Vijayakanth is a really lousy actor and it's a sight to behold to see him act, or play smart, or cool, or funny. But that makes this glorious three hour epic filled with romance, drama, slapstick, music, bloody squibs, self-glorification and martial arts so much fun.

There's four big fighting-scenes to look forward too. All four goes on forever and gets more and more spectacular for every minute they goes on. The Captain sure knows how to kick people all over the room, or make triple-triple somersaults over people and show it from five different angles, often in slow-motion. One fight is set in a ladder-factory and turns out to be a really fun and creative action sequence, with lots of way to take people out with hitting a ladder to their head. It has four or five musical numbers, and most of them is quite decent, especially if you wanna see semi-naked Indian hairy men dancing and smiling like there's no tomorrow.

This movie has so many silly highlights and it makes me wanna find even more Vijayakanth movies. If someone has ANY idea where to buy DVDs with him, please let me know.