As everyone knows, the story is about Rajinikanth clashing with Ramya Krishnan. As a Superstar vehicle, ‘Padayappa’ works. But the passage of time also allows us to reflect on the series of films that the star made during the 1990s.
What is the perfect Rajinikanth movie? I’m going to say Mullum Malarum, because as a piece of cinema, as a character study, as a singular testament to the man’s matchless charisma and his ability to hold the screen even while doing nothing and just being present, nothing that he did surpassed that Mahendran classic. But let’s tweak the question a bit. What is the perfect Superstar/Thalaivar movie, the movie that encapsulates the Rajinikanth whose stardom outgrew the actor-dom of Mullum Malarum? For this, the answer is probably not just a single film, but the stretch of movies he made in the 1990s, starting with Dharmadurai in 1991 and ending with Padayappa in 1999. This stretch includes not just the biggies like Annaamalai and Arunachalam and Baashha, but also underperforming films like Yejamaan and Valli, which he wrote and starred in, in a special appearance.
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