By Manigandan K.R. Director Nelson Dilipkumar's 'Beast' is an action comedy whose only aim seems to be to glorify its hero's character. As a result, it fails to impress. It is just an ordinary commercial entertainer that has exaggerated action sequences, little or no humour and a wafer-thin plot. The story revolves around Vijayaraghavan (Vijay), who is from India's elite intelligence agency, RAW. Vijayaraghavan has quit the agency because of a child getting killed in a military operation he was involved in. Time passes and the former agent is still unable to overcome the psychological trauma caused by the death of the child. One day, Vijayaraghavan goes to a mall in the city accompanied by his girlfriend, Preethi (Pooja Hegde), and the head of a private security service (VTV Ganesh).
On reaching the mall, he instantly realises that it is under seige by terrorists. How Vijayaraghavan saves the hostages and neutralises the terrorists is what the film is all about. The film can basically be broken into two components -- humour and action. While some of the action sequences make you laugh, most of the humorous parts don't. Director Nelson, who is known for his sparkling humour, seems to have miserably failed in his attempt to recreate the magic of his earlier films, notably 'Doctor' and 'Kolamavu Kokila'. This is not to say that all jokes fall flat. Some jokes click, but these are few and far between. And the exaggerated action sequences seem to have been added with the sole intention of glorifying the hero's character. Some of the sequences involving VTV Ganesh, Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley work, but these offer little or no satisfaction to audiences who were expecting a humour feast from Nelson Dilipkumar.
One other thing that has gone horribly wrong for Nelson in 'Beast' is that while his earlier films always had a story that had logic. This one seems to be completely devoid of it, as the film looks to glorify the character of Vijayaraghavan at every given opportunity. Sample this for instance. The hero can kill terrorists at will, without so much as breaking into a sweat. He consistently keeps taking on the terrorists who are shooting to kill, but strangely never gets shot even once! He might be from RAW but he can also fly fighter planes! That's not all! He can also even order other fighter squadrons in the Air Force! One could go on, but then, you get the point, right? Pooja Hegde has not much to do. Honestly speaking, no character other than that of the hero has anything significant to do. Manoj Paramahamsa's cinematography is neat and Anirudh's music is outstanding. To cut a long story short, 'Beast' is an exercise in self-glorification!