Vijay’s father filmmaker Chandrasekhar slams ‘Beast’ director Nelson

Actor Vijay’s father and filmmaker SA Chandrasekhar has slammed ‘Beast’ director Nelson Dilip Kumar for making a movie ‘solely relying on Vijay’s stardom. Speaking in a recent interview, he expressed disappointment over the movie’s screenplay and raised questions at Nelson for not doing his “homework” on RAW agents and cross-border terrorism, which serve as the film’s important plot points.
‘Beast’ marked the maiden collaboration of director Nelson and Vijay. The movie stars Vijay in the lead as one of the best spies the country has ever had. The movie follows the character as he attempts to rescue people being held hostage by terrorists inside a mall. The movie opened in theatres amid high expectations last week, but mostly earned a mixed response from critics and audiences.
Chandrasekhar, in sharing his thoughts about the movie, said, “This is a film that was made solely relying on Vijay’s stardom. Young filmmakers deliver an excellent first film in terms of content, technology and making. They also somehow achieve good results with the second film. When they begin to get the projects of big superstars, these young filmmakers begin to think, ‘now that we have dates of these heroes, we can make movies whichever way we want.’ They think he (the star) already has a huge fan following and his film will run successfully in theatres, so no need for a screenplay and things like that. And they make a movie with a few songs and fights.”
Furthermore, Chandrasekhar said the film which talks about ISIS terrorists and RAW agents hasn’t done enough research to study how they operate. “You need to take time to study about all these things. You can’t just rush into a project because you’ve got dates from a star hero. A good screenplay will immerse audiences into a story and this was missing in this film,” he added.
In its opening weekend, ‘Beast’ breached the Rs 200 crore club worldwide. This is the fifth time a Vijay-starrer has breached the 200-crore club. Since then, the film has seen a massive drop each day outside Tamil Nadu, largely due to the success of the Kannada film 'KGF: Chapter 2’.