Si3: A REEBYOO

WARNING: Spoilers 😂😂😂😂

I was fortunate to catch this instant classic in Zee Cinema HD (SD is for plebs 😜) while channel hopping. Missed the first 30 odd minutes but thanks to Hari's multiple flashbacks (from both the previous movies) to fill time, I didn't miss anything. 

First a recap. Singam is the mythical haanast, kadamai, kanniyam, kattuppadu ulla oru Tamizhnattu Police. He has this need to keep repeating that he's an "Indian Police". It is clear from the language (Tamizh - Indian.....for now, sorry poraalis) he speaks and the Khaki uniform he wears that he is a police officer but he nevertheless continues to keep informing the audience. 

In part 2 of the trilogy he showed the variations of how the exclamation "Hey" can be used to emote and convey various deeply personal situations. A recap from big bro Prabhu Ferrari's all time classic review of Singam 2:

Surya doing romance: Imagine you are lifting a heavy sofa along with your spouse or relative. How do you say ‘hey’ at that time. Very softly right? That voice modulation is to show Surya is romantic.

Surya mildly annoyed: Imagine eating pani puri. Just when you have broken the puri, poured the special liquid after stuffing the puri and are about to consume it, the entire puri crumbles. Imagine how annoyed and frustrated you will be. Try saying Hey at that time.

Surya very annoyed: The worst thing traveling by bus for an overnight journey is the lack of toilet options. Imagine you waking up with a full bladder just after the bus has completed its scheduled stop and is rejoining the highway from the roadside dhaba. HEY. Yes exactly. Not everyone will be like panchathanthiram jayaram to say ‘enakku innum aagalai’.

Surya completely annoyed: Imagine you booking a ticket for a good movie but by mistake the movie operator plays bharathiraja’s annakodi instead of the movie you booked. HEYYYY!

Now in part 3, he is liaised with CeeBee (CBI in colloquial Tamizh) and so he can be in mufti. Ah now I get it. That's why he has to keep repeating he's an Indian Police. Otherwise people will forget he is. Genius from Hari.

The villain is a bodybuilder in real life. So there are only two types of clothes he wears: in a dapper suit or topless like indhee nadigan salmaan gaan.

Plot of the movie is very very simple. Phone call, meeting, phone call, car chase, phone call, meeting, phone call, gun fight, phone call......well you get the point.

Three standout scenes in the movie.

1. The Great Car Chase

Take the best car chase you have seen. Bullitt, French Connection, Terminator, Heat, hell even Death Proof. Put them all together. Raise it to infinity. Now imagine it. How is it? Awesome innit? Now multiply this raised to infinity concoction by 100 and still you wouldn't be close to the awesome car chase of Si3.

The adiyaal villain overturns an auto, our Singam sir gets down, checks on the accident victims and calls an ambulance. The villain is going at 120 km/hr speed and should have presumably put quite some distance between himself and the policemen but cut to the chase the distance between the two cars is still 5 feet.

That's how an ordinary car chase will play out in Tamizh cinema. Hari is a genius director. He believes in naturalness. Anticipating this sort of smartassery from the audience, Hari has not one, not two but THREE police cars chasing the adiyaal villain. He overturns an auto Singam sir with his bluetooth headphone checks up on his subordinate in car 1. The subordinate says "dontree aapisar I will take care" and calls the ambulance. The villains makes a motorcycle fly, Singam sir calls car 2 and continues his kadamai in catching the adiyaal villain.

Hari 1, Audience 0.

2. The Great Hero-Villain Sandippu (Meeting)

There are iconic scenes where two powerful characters meet. Rajini and Mammotty's meeting in Thalapathy. Rajini & Raghuvaran's meeting in Baasha. In recent times, there is Jayam Ravi and Arvindsamy meeting in Thani Oruvan. But all of those are jujubee. The most iconic scene of them all is probably Al Pacino & Robert De Niro's 10 minute chat in Heat. Two of the greatest Hollywood actors of all time sharing the screen for the first time ever. Playing cat and mouse.

Singam & bodybuilder villain meeting blows that scene away. It was like a verbal joust version of Ali-Foreman Thrilla-in-Manila. The acting from Suriya and the bodybuilder villain made even Vietnam Veedu Sivaji Ganesan seem like underacting. Unreal intensity.

3. Singam Meets Airport Security In Kingsford Smith

To protect his oif from the bodybuilder villain Singam sir first sends her to the airport at 10AM itself for a 6PM flight. The flight was already there in terminal and it was full! The only empty seat in the flight was of Singam sir's.

Anyway this picknitting and, once again, jujubee. The bodybuilder villain has the entire city of Sydney in his payroll apparently. He sends hitmen, vellaikkaara adiyaals, policemen etc etc but Singam sir evades them all and just as he's about to clear security check he's trapped by the airport security men. He's apparently wanted for a previous drug deal gone awry.

Singam sir calmly explains that he was on a mission then and he's on a mission now. He tells he killed the dog drug dealer Danny and saved Australia from a drug epidemic. The head of airport security then asks a laajikkal qozin "How do we know that's you?". Singam sir says "Gokul it" and immediately there are 100s of links of Singam sir as an Indian Police. Airport people immediately salute him. A proudest moment for an Indian Police.

Then of course, there's the climax fight. The bodybuilder winner is chased by Singam sir where every two seconds there was CGI to morph/remorph a lion (singam geddid?) and Suriya. The villain was surprisingly not in a suit but he's a bodybuilder so he tears his skin tight tee-shirt off to show his pecs/lats/biceps/triceps. He lifts a huge log like a weightlifter and throws it toward Singam Sir.

Singam sir shows some Dennis Bergkampesque silky first touch abilities and traps the tree log under his foot like Dennis used to trap a bouncing football on uneven, soggy English football pitches. Singam sir then reminds us of Steven Gerrard's winner against Olympiakos by thrashing the dropping bodybuilder villain in a stunning half-volley. Perfect technique from Singam sir. I think Indian football missed out on a talented football player. We could have easily won the World Cup with a player of Singam sir's caliber.

Last but not least, the movie was 100X more enjoyable because I didn't see it in Tamizh. I saw the indhee dubbed version. I thank Nehru that I didn't see it in Sun TV on a vidumurai naal. Must be some last birth punyam that I randomly landed on a channel that I rarely see.

Rating: 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁 out of 🦁🦁🦁🦁🦁

P.S: Special award must be given for the cinematographer(s) of the entire trilogy. They made an Amazonian aaradi Anushka (5'10" - 178 cm) seem shorter than the midget Suriya (5'5" - 165 cm) for almost 9 hours. Something that's not possible even by a supercomputer coded CGI.