Review of Ratchakan

Introduction

Ajay (Nagarjuna) falls in love with Sonia (Sushmita Sen), and her father (Grish Karnad) is willing for the two to be married as per Sonia`s wishes, but he finds one flaw with Ajay......his temperamental anger he shows when he sees injustice. Sonia`s father, a rich tycoonist, decides to put Ajay to the test. In his factory are some goons who are causing hindrances with production and employers. The goons work for his stepbrother Dhayaneswaran (Raghuvaran) who wants revenge as he was framed for murder many years by Sonia`s father in order to take over the families wealth.

Dhayaneswaran now angry wants to destroy the family business and does so with the help of his goons. Sonia`s father decides if Ajay can take the bullying from the goons then he has control his temper. But in reality Sonia`s father knows that Ajay won`t do this and that he will get rid of the goons thus breaking his temper and losing Sonia......which is what the father also wants to happen.......

Video

The DVD is presented in an non anamorphic aspect ratio of 1.85:1 which has been cropped from the film`s original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Yet the cropping is not as evident and the limited frame on this disc seems to cover almost everything. But the cinematography is missing during some action scenes, and purist like myself would prefer the original aspect ratio. This DVD was done before Ayngaran International decided to go with original aspect ratio via anamorphic transfers on all their future widescreen releases. But it would have been better if they re-did the DVD like all their new titles so this disc could be on the same level.

Ayngaran International have done some great DVD`s in the past, but this DVD is their weakest title, in terms of picture quality, to come from their collection and it is purely due to the source used. The original source, which Ayngaran Internaitonal had access to, had taken some major battering over the past years due to lack of care on the negatives. This resulted in the source to be damaged to such an extent that it nearly is unwatchable at times. So much wear and tear are visible in some scenes that it distracted my viewing. Wear and tear in the form of thick white and yellow vertical lines appeared randomly but not as often as the white dots and specks which added fustration.

The DVD had small signs of compression artefacts and elements of film grain, also elements of softness affected picture information in many scenes. Yet the disc also had moments of decent digital quality when some scenes had no damage problems on the source. Sharpness was great, and colour definition was also very cinematic, but these were rare occurrences and showed worrying signs that the source will die in less then a few years time thus losing the film forever!

The overall colour fidelity is not as good as the source used showed problems in handling the once bold and vibrant colours. The disc now had a brown and yellow look to it as the hues were overpowering some frames. Also colour distortion is seen in some key scenes as are colour bleeding moments. Also affect are the dark details and shadow which makes small details more harder to see on the eye.

Audio

While the picture is affected the sound remains perfect as it was originally recorded digitally on the excellent DTS system. The original soundtrack has been used and converted into Dolby Digital 5.1 for this DVD and I`m please to say it is the saving factor on this disc. While there are a couple of sound drops, which occured so the damaged picture remained in the same time mode to the sound information, no other sound problems were detected.

The 5.1 sound contained a great expansive soundfield that filled my room with information, placing me in the centre. Sound effects and music was elaborated even further with the advent of action and song scenes, which also gave the LFE channel some work to do and did so just fine without ever overpowering. A pleasing experience for your ears indeed!

Features

The menus are of average design, and are easy to navigate over. Box design could do with some improvements, as could the poor 16x9 unfriendly subtitles since the grammar needs improving. Also the intermission sign is cut from the film, which didn`t help me with the `cinema` experience that I get with other DVD`s from DEI and Video-Sound which do leave them in.

Conclusion

Perhaps one of the weakest film from Tamil cinema ever, it fails to achieve what other films from the big banner; Gentleman films have done so in the past with movies like Gentleman (1992), Kadhalan (1994), and Kadal Desam (1996). All these film proved great entertainment, with some fine cinematic moments in Indian movies. Ratchakan (1996), fails to do this as it has a weak plot, poor performances, and gimmicky special effects which are nasty or just damn right stupid. The only positive aspect going for the film is the wonderful song score by A.R. Rahman, and the fine orchestration background score which is memorable.

The film initially could have been a great movie, but the director seems more bothered about grand scale design (which he fails to achieve) rather then the actually screenplay and performances. The climax while off key in some places, could have been the most thrilling if it was done right. Some parts of the film are also just embarrassing like the air balloon scene, and the `your in my eyes` moment. The comedy fails to ignite laughter and the less said about the emotionally parts the better. Also some of the cinematography and choreography used in the songs doesn`t justify or complement the music.

This film is poor in all departments, except music, and perhaps that is the reason why it failed at the box office in India, the first film to do that for the Gentleman films banner.

The one thing that could have saved this DVD would be to restore the original 35mm negative source, which could have been done if the source was given to the right people. Also the increased used of the bit rate would have helped picture information further. But despite that this DVD had great sound and certainly still is above many other Hindi brand new titles released like Chori Chori Chupke Chupke (2001).