First of all the movie has a brilliant plot, when it enters into Raja Lingeswaran's flashback. But why the movie has such a low rating and box office reception you ask, i'll tell you.
The movie is well cast. Especially Vijayakumar, who does a great job.
The movie falls mainly due to poor direction, cinematography, music and pretty much every technical department fails in this one.
K.S. Ravikumar had a great story but overloads it with a lot usual masala stuff, making it a tough watch.
The stunts reminded me of "Man of steel", with a lot of flying and destruction. Totally cringe worthy.
The director tries hard to bring the style element in, but fails. Because first the movies like Baasha, Padayappa, Arunachalam etc.. set a baseline standard for Thalaivar. Then the bar was set even higher by Shankar's Sivaji with an even more stylish Superstar. KSR tries to bring all these style elements together, failing big time.
Another extremely irritating part of the movie being the portrayal of the heroines. A total Arunachalam-Padayappa rip off. Those kind of heroines were popular then. Times have changed, it's 2015 now and social situations have changed a lot. But the director sadly, is still stuck in the 19th century.
IN A NUTSHELL, I WOULD SAY: The movie would have been better with only the RAJA's sequence, where SUPERSTAR would shine as an ACTOR rather than just a style icon.
Rajini did so well in the RAJA half, it was brilliant by the actor.
And one thing i would criticize on the RAJA's sequence would be that they fail to show the Architectural difficulties of building such a dam.
Other than that the RAJA's plot was just sheer brilliance. Certainly a watchable movie which could have been better.
