Review: In 'Beast' director Nelson takes a backdrop that is serious - a hostage situation - and tries to make it funny without much success. In fact, the film barely delivers the laughs in the places where it should have been funny and makes us break into a laugh whenever it tries to be a mass hero movie.

The film 'Beast' does begin promisingly. We get a prologue involving Veera Raghavan (Vijay), a senior RAW officer who ends up psychologically scarred following a mission to capture a most-wanted terror mastermind. He leaves the organisation and is trying to get rid of his demons, but then, the mall which he is at with his girlfriend Preethi (Pooja Hegde) is taken over by terrorists. The government's negotiator Althaf Hussain (Selvaraghavan) manages to coax Veera into taking up the rescue mission, but can he succeed?

Beast has a protagonist who is too strong given a mission that never seems to be a challenge. The terrorists hardly seem dangerous (they barely kill anyone, even when trying to put fear in the hearts of the hostages), and the mission hardly comes across as something of a daunting task for a daredevil like Veera. None of the hijackers have any personality, including their leader Saif (Ankur Ajit Vikal). "Innum konjam tough kuduthurukalam," Veera tells Saif towards the end of the film, and it only highlights how weak the antagonist in the film is.

Nelson gives his protagonist a bunch of oddballs with whom he needs to team up to take down the terrorists but the characters hardly get enough screen or motivation to be memorable. Only VTV Ganesh manages to generate a few laughs while the shtick involving Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley gets tiresome after a while.

Anirudh tries to add some punch to the scenes with his score, but by the time we get to the end, with writing that is only leaner and never meaner or stronger, even that doesn't work. The director seems to have banked entirely on his star to carry the film, but with a script that hardly offers him anything to work with, even Vijay could only do so much with his star power.