BODYGUARD REVIEW

It's quite early in the year and the turkey has gobbled. Siddiq's Bodyguard is bafflingly boring and could best be enjoyed with a blindfold on. Keep a real sturdy bullet proof vest with special trauma pads tucked in handy to confront the several misfires that this Bodyguard lets off. Jayakrishnan (Dileep) has had a strange penchant for juggling with risks ever since he was a small boy. He grows up admiring men who live on peril-ground and aspires to be a bodyguard to an almost legendary thug, Asokan (Thyagarajan). When the don's daughter Ammu (Nayantara) joins college, Jayakrishnan is sent along with her as her bodyguard, and it's not long before Cupid breaks their guard.At this moment, do not even dare think of Kevin Costner or Whitney Houston. Any comparison with the Hollywood movie that goes by the same name could be quite far-fetched. This film on the other hand looks like a moth eaten version of a theme that obviously held some promise, but that ultimately failed to meet any of the requisites.Easily Siddiq's worst script till date, Bodyguard hasn't an inkling as to where it's headed. If moving away from his strong comic forte wasn't recipe enough for disaster, Siddiq dabbles with romance and burns his unsure fingers. The romance in the film is half baked, fake and out-and-out dull. This film could never even dream of being a love saga as most of the situations that it depends on to push the yarn forward are nothing short of obtuse. When the infamous railways station where almost all love tales wind up in Malluwood comes up, we breast ourselves for a dramatic climax. But what actually happens there in this case is almost unmentionable. I am not talking about spoilers here, I am talking instead of one of the most ridiculous twists witnessed in recent times that should leave an entire audience speechless, on account of its silliness. This isn't a twist really, it's a twist-till-it-snaps kind of a bombshell that makes the destruction complete.The most off-putting instants in the film hence occur during the last fifteen minutes, when there are sudden jerks between flashbacks and when the final disclosure arrives, you feel sympathetic towards the Bodyguard. You realize that the script has made him out to be a man who has lived a life without any purpose, and who is as brainless as a jellyfish. And then suddenly, with barely five minutes left before the credits start rolling, everything starts working out like a keyed up alarm clock, and by the time the bell goes off, everything around him has fallen into place. And that includes his messed up life as well.Dileep as the Bodyguard is strictly passable; the actor has seen better days and certainly better scripts. Thankfully, he doesn't strut around perking up his muscles except to rake up some laughter, though he does flash the dragon tattoo on an almost-bulging bicep. Nayantara in her new size zero avatar looks drop-dead dazzling and definitely makes eye-popper material. Forget fascinating, there's hardly anything memorable going on here. Strikingly underwritten, Bodyguard suffers from a serious lack of imagination that drops it straight into a big black hole.