Regular readers of this blog will know that there are lots of kinds people that I hate, and somewhere in the top 10 are the folks that think the laws of physics are optional. I hate movie directors as it is, and when they get this “The laws of physics are more like guidelines” attitude, it just flips me out. Someone has told them they have the artistic license, and these directors have taken it as a license to murder common sense and logic, and they do it with unapologetic abandon.

I saw a spectacularly stupid example of film making recently when I went to watch “Wanted”. I mean, I’m not one to miss a movie with Angelina Jolie in it, but this absurdity of this pathetic excuse for a movie is is unparalleled, even in nearby parallel universes.

The premise of the movie is that there is this dude who has physics-defying shooting abilities. He can, for example, “curve” a bullet, much like Beckham curves a football. I feel like I should sit down with the director of this movie and explain to him aerodynamics, then drill into his tiny head the law of conservation of momentum, and make him work out the equations for the differential air resistance required on a rotating bullet to overcome the momentum of the bullet which, by the way, is about 64 Kgm/s and nearly impossible to do. Maybe then he’ll see the light.

But oh no, he goes on, gravity and momentum be damned, showing absurdity after absurdity, while half the audience gawks at the special effects and the other half gawks at Angelina Jolie, leaving only me with my constantly increasing blood pressure to wonder at how this director can have hung out common sense to dry out of the window like this. Sometimes I feel the government should tax such movies extra and use the money to start a “physics for dumbasses” course for movie directors.

Anyway, the director is obviously inspired by Rajnikanth movies. There is this scene where the bad guy shoots a bullet at the good guy, and our hero has to save the good guy. What does he do? Simple: He shoots at the bullet with HIS gun, and his bullet hits the bad guy’s bullet, knocking it out, and saving the day. Doing that requires a reaction time of 10^-2 seconds, which is not enough for his eyes to even capture the image (4×10^-2 seconds), let alone his brain to see, interpret, analyze and recognize the image, then decide, send the signal to his muscles, which have to co-ordinate and contract and relax, align perfectly, and finally press the trigger. Reminded me a scene from Ramanad Sagar’s Mahabharat where they did the same thing with arrows.

This kind of macho-super-human abilities work only for Rajnikanth (of who, for the record, I am a HUGE fan). I mean the 20-something kid in the movie is no match for our evergreen Rajnikanth, (they tell the story of this girl who starred as Rajnikanth’s daughter, later his girlfriend, and now as his mother, while Rajnikanth who has absolutely not aged) who executes these movies with his signature snazzy super style spectacularly. Rajnikanth is at least 2 orders of magnitude cooler than anything hollywood can produce, and their uninspired lift of a Rajnikanth movie leaves much to be desired.

And oh, there is no interesting scene with Angeliena Jolie either (if you know what I mean), so absolutely no point watching the movie.

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