Public key encryption and decent paarties

One of the courses I took in grad school was Applied Cryptography. This was a filler course in the Computer Systems side but was very informative and interesting. The course instructor made a counter-intuitive statement regarding secrecy of information. He said, an ecryption algorithm whose methods are not explained, is bound to be broken more easily than one whose methods are publicly available. The mathematical difficulty in breaking a code is what is more important than a "clever" way to encode things.

To be fair, Sujatha tries to use this method (serial numbers of currency notes) in Sivaji, but the whole 2-year hype and secrecy in making the movie and finally seeing the end product (after tallying with rumors of the story lines which all matched) is like a "clever" but mathematically tractable encryptyion algorithm.

But that is just the movie critic in me speaking. I enjoyed the movie since thalaivar's movies are hard to come by and and I am a die-hard fan. Perhaps if he acts more frequently or if I stop critical analysis of movies, then I could have enjoyed it more. Now, we know both of that is impossible.

Rajni has awesome screen presence and shows why he is the king of style and survived and thrived the test of time. There are not too many 55+ year olds that I know of who is as well maintained as he is. One can watch it just for the mottai boss scenes (WOW!) and Style and Adhiradi songs. In spite of the blurry print in this theatre, K.V. Anand's camera is gold. Rahman is class in songs and BGM, although there were certainly some changes made during the re-recording. Vivek outclasses everyone (including thalaivar) in most scenes. Shriya is hot in all songs and Nayanthara was a good choice for the first song, although I personally did not like the choreography (a new meaning for pot bellies!)

The story as such is nothing new but it manages to keep us entertained in chunks. It need not be this long and there seems to be some kind of a blunt scissors which was being used in the editing room.

Once again, Sujatha over-simplifies things for the common man. The scene when someone asks "what is black money, is it so called because it is black?" was the limit of being pedantic. Of course, voice-activated passwords would have had any red-blooded Comp. sci person cringe. But overall, the dialogs were pretty sharp and enjoyable. Spoofs of Chandramukhi were a riot.

Some scenes could have been totally avoided; some could have had more emphasis. I am sure Shankar would be regretting in quite a few instances. Such is the tantalizing effects of hind-sight.

I felt that the audience were too decent for my liking, especially for a thalaivar movie. There were some token screams and chants and mad celebration, but nothing when compared to a movie theatre in Madras. I remember Baasha's autokaaran song to be inaudible when I saw it. Come on people, show some crass!

For sure, Baasha is still (and would be) thalaivar's best movie and Mudhalvan, Shankar's.

To summarize, the heart loved it, the brain picks at it.