Review of the movie - Enthiran

I rarely watch movies. And definitely I have never thought of reviewing any movie. But something wanted me to review Enthiran.

Generally movies contain silly illogical things. Enthiran, being the first of its kind in Tamil, also has silly illogical scenes and dialogues. We should and can easily ignore most of them. Before reading this review, it is better to get to know the plot of the Enthiran.

At the face of it:

1. Saloon scene was enjoyable, though scanning the telephone directory just by shaking it twice was a bit unbelievable even as a fantasy.
   
2. Dialog between Traffic constable and Chitti was good.
3. Chitti surprising vaseegaran by saying he is his creator and hence god was a well thought out scene.
4. Chitti looking like Kali after attracting the weapons was really looking nice.
   
5. Train sequence was really titillating the eyes, though we should have expected such a sequence in the movie. We have seen such super heroic scenes in the previous Rajni movies and Shankar movies. Only here, he has a better reason to do so.
6. The rescue of people from fire was looking good, though the use of magnetic power to attach over long distances was a lot more than a fantasy.
7. The dialogs between Vasee and Chitti while adding the feelings was really good.
8. The normal delivery of the baby by Chitti and ultrasound video stream would titillate almost anybody.
9. Dialog between Chitti, Sana and Vasee after the birthday party was really good.
10. The buildup of the robot and the AIRD evaluation and the addition of feelings to Chitti and how he behaves was very enjoyable and I was wondering what is going to happen next. Then comes the section of the movie where Bohra inserts red chip and Chitti becomes Villain and a usual fight between Good and evil, Hero and Villain happens. I agree that I really liked the villain Rajni's acting. The Graphics was good in this section. Apart from Rajni's acting and the graphics/visuals, this section was not fitting into this movie at all. Is that the best thing Shankar could come up with after giving a very good start for the movie?
11. Like any other previous Shankar movies I expected the faster screenplay. However the unwarranted songs were a bit annoying.
12. I was mesmerized by Sujatha's dialogues. I in fact wonder what Shankar is going to do in his future films without Sujatha's dialogues.

It was a good effort from the team and I was happy when I came out of the theater. How I knew that I cannot avoid looking back at the movie and see what really looks good beyond the theater.


In Hindsight:
Though we do not need to compare the real world technologies and the ones used in fiction, we should at least do the basic checks. Neural schema is talked about. Processor speed and memory are talked about. Videos are stored. Sensory inputs are analyzed by processor. With this what I understand is that, Chitti has a neural network based on some specific neural schema. To take sensory inputs and process them and similarly to control the peripherals, Chitti must be using both the neural network and the processor and memory. With this in mind let me analyze the critical things.

1. Chitti is shown to get skills in departments like Martial arts, Music, Dance, Memory, Magnetic, Driving skills, Linguistic skills, Rescuing from fire, Self assembling. And it is shown that all these skills are simply uploaded into memory so that chitti is able to use them. With how Chitti is using the skills, I just infer that it will be the neural network which he would be using. Whatever the neural schema maybe, I am very skeptical that, even in future, a robot can learn the skills just like that. Especially those skills which require humans to spend longer and longer to learn, the robots will take equally longer. Similarly developing the logical and analytical skills and power of reflection, creativity needs a lot of time. Without this Chitti could not have answered deep questions in the AIRD evaluation. But because this is the base of the movie, we do not have any other choice but to ignore this.
   
2. Neural networks are not garbage in garbage out systems. The output behavior cannot be restricted to a limited range. Chitti surprising vaseegaran by saying he is his creator and hence god was a very good example of this.
3. The idea that chitti will kill enemies and so was not designed with Asimov's laws inbuilt is probably fine. But the idea that chitti needs feelings to identify enemies from friends seems to be a serious flaw. If not Asimov's laws, it should be some other laws and it definitely does not justify the addition of feelings to chitti. However, I agree that it might not have been interesting if feelings were not added to chitti. But the reasoning should have been better.
4. When Vasee instructed Chitti to rescue people from fire without anybody dying, Chitti was able to accomplish without having any feelings/emotions. Similar thing applies to doing normal delivery of the baby. Vasee just needs to instruct that both the mother and baby should do fine after the delivery. Feelings/Emotions are not required for performing normal delivery. We can give lame reasons to justify that Chitti requires emotions for this. But there is no strong base. But since people willbe mesmerized by seeing this scene, this illogical thing would not strike their mind.
   
5. Sana says that it is difficult for humans to forget somebody who is very close to them but is easy for Chitti as it is just a machine. This may not be true. Only the videos stored in RAM like memory can be deleted quickly. What is stored in the neural network does not go away easily. The more something is associated in the neural network, the more time it will take to forget.
   
6. Forget about Bohra polluting Chitti. Once Vasee added feelings to Chitti, he should have understood that he is now a complete human being or actually much more than that. He is now free to have his own motivations and drives. Vasee cannot force his wishes on a human being who has feelings like how parents cannot force their wishes on their kids.

What I would appreciate even after a long time is the introduction of the concept of adding feelings to the machine. Because I believe that we ourselves are machines having feelings.