Tik Tik Tik (2018 film)

Tik Tik Tik
Official theatrical release poster
Directed by	Shakti Soundar Rajan
Produced by	Nemichand Jhabak
Written by	Shakti Soundar Rajan
Starring	Jayam Ravi Nivetha Pethuraj Ramesh Thilak Aaron Aziz
Music by	D. Imman
Cinematography	S. Venkatesh
Edited by	Pradeep E Ragav
Production company	Nemichand Jhabak
Release date	June 22, 2018 (2018-06-22)
Running time	131 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Box office	₹376.30 million[1]

Tik Tik Tik is a 2018 Indian Tamil-language science fiction thriller film written and directed by Shakti Soundar Rajan.^[2][3] It has been promoted as India's first space film.^[4][5] It features Jayam Ravi, Aaron Aziz, and Nivetha Pethuraj in the lead roles.^[6][7][8] The film is inspired by Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay.^{[9][10][11][12]}

Plot

An asteroid strikes the Ennore neighborhood of Chennai. Soon, astronauts predict another asteroid with an estimated size of 60 square kilometers is going to hit India within 6 days, which could be catastrophic. The Indian Space Research Organisation decides to send M. Vasu (Jayam Ravi), a trained magician and escape artist, along with his team and a team of scientists to get ahold of a missile in a space center which they plan to use to destroy the asteroid before it reaches Earth. The military also catches Venkat (Ramesh Thilak) and Appu (Arjunan), two of Vasu's good friends, as per Vasu's instructions. Vasu, Venkat, and Appu are alerted about the asteroid and that they have to steal a nuclear missile from a Chinese space station. The mission is disguised as a satellite maintenance project. Vasu meets Swathi (Nivetha Pethuraj) and Raguram (Vincent Asokan), two army officials who are also going on the mission with them. Vasu, Swathi, Venkat, Appu, and their captain Raguram go on the space shuttle, Dhruva-1, but just before launch, Vasu's speech channel is directed to an unknown voice. The unknown voice tells Vasu he has kidnapped his son Ravi (Arav Ravi), and that Ravi will die unless Vasu obtains the missile and gives it to him. Vasu, who is emotionally attached to his son, agrees. The space shuttle launches. While in flight, Vasu goes unconscious, and Swathi and Venkat take him to the sick bay. There, Vasu wakes up and goes into the wire chamber to cut the wire that controls the liquid hydrogen fuel tank. It is revealed that Vasu faked going unconscious due to directions from the unknown voice. Vasu cuts the wire, and as a result, the fuel tank loses much of its fuel. It only has enough fuel for an hour.

Dhruva-1 crash-lands on the moon, where Vasu becomes the first Indian man to step on the moon after pushing Raguram aside. Swathi and Raguram are investigating the problem when Vasu suggests that they request fuel from the target space station. Raguram at first objects, but Swathi convinces him to fly to the space station. The space station astronauts agree to refuel them. However, once Vasu, Swathi, Raguram, Venkat, and Appu go on the space station after Dhruva-1 is done docking, they are immediately arrested. The captain of the space station, Lee Wei (Aaron Aziz), tells them he knows about the asteroid, and he knows that they want to get his missile. However, he refuses to give it, saying they want the asteroid to strike so that China, Lee's native country, can gain more power by signing financial contracts to rebuild southern India and Sri Lanka. Lee tells his soldiers to release Vasu and the rest of the crew only when the asteroid bypasses the safety line. Once the asteroid bypasses the safety line, there is no chance of diverting it.

Meanwhile, Ritika (Rethika Srinivas), a high-ranking official managing the mission, discovers surveillance photos of Vasu cutting the wires. She suspects someone managing the mission had caused Vasu to do that but is not sure who it is. After she leaves the chief's office, Chief Mahendran (Jayaprakash) is revealed to be the unknown voice telling Vasu to bring him the missile so that he could send it to an international terrorist. Meanwhile, back at the space station, Vasu attempts to fight against the soldiers before being handcuffed once again. The soldiers take the briefcase he is holding and keep it aside. Venkat, who was hiding in the briefcase, comes out of the briefcase and inserts a USB drive into the space station's computer system. He then surrenders to the soldiers and is taken to the cell. There, he and Vasu work on downloading a bug into the space station via the USB drive. They, along with the other crew members, learn that Lee's fingerprint and iris are required to unlock the cell that hides the nuclear missile.

This causes a major disruption as the lights start flickering intensely. Through this, Vasu is able to obtain Lee's fingerprint and iris scans. He uses them to unlock the cell. Moments later, he is thrown back into the cell when a soldier reports to Lee the missile is missing. Lee tortures the crew members until Vasu tells him the missile is in Dhruva-1. At that point, he takes off the handcuffs and escapes to Dhruva-1. He tells Swathi through a walkie-talkie to tell Lee the missile is aimed at China. Lee and the soldiers start panicking. At that time, it is revealed that Vasu didn't take the nuclear missile; he used a magic trick to make it look as if it was gone. He proceeds to steal the missile, sounding the alarm and alerting Lee and his soldiers. Swathi, Raguram, Appu, and Venkat escape to Dhruva-1. Vasu steals the missile and escapes to Dhruva-1 with a low oxygen tank. The crew settles down and proceeds to fly to the asteroid. On the way, another space shuttle, Dhruva-2, will refuel Dhruva-1 before returning to Earth.

Mahendran tells Vasu giving the missile to Dhruva-2 will cause Mahendran to release Ravi. Vasu gives the missile to Dhruva-2 while docked. Back on Earth, Mahendran, who is alerted about this, lets Ravi go. Dhruva-1 then proceeds to the asteroid. Once they get close to the asteroid, Swathi and Raguram notice the missile is missing. Mahendran, who has access to the photos of Vasu cutting the wire, tells it is Vasu's fault, using the photos as evidence. Everyone gets worried, and many mission officials fear that their families will die in the asteroid strike. Once the asteroid seemingly reaches the safety line, the Dhruva-1 crew alerts that the asteroid is actually not at the safety line and is 2 minutes away from it. It is revealed Vasu discussed the unknown voice with the other crew members, and they formulated a plan. The "missile" given to Dhruva-2 was actually a fake duplicate and not the authentic missile. They proceed to shoot the authentic missile at the asteroid, which destroys the asteroid and saves the world from a catastrophe. Everyone except Mahendran cheers.

At the mission control center, Ritika finds out Mahendran was threatening to kill Ravi unless he got the missile. She goes to confront Mahendran but is killed by him wielding a golf club. Mahendran cleans up the incident and his clothes. In space, a chunk of the asteroid damages Dhruva-1's left wing, forcing the crew to go in a pod. The pod lands in a river, and on the banks are the mission control officials who cheer for their victory, along with Ravi and his grandfather. Vasu and Ravi meet once again, and Ravi tells Vasu to look in his pocket. Vasu takes out a piece of jewelry he knew was Mahendran's, and learned it was Mahendran who kidnapped Ravi.

The film fast-forwards to an awards ceremony. When Vasu gets his award, he gives the piece of jewelry back and whispers to Mahendran, "After all, he's my son." Vasu walks away with Appu and Venkat while Mahendran commits suicide offscreen.

Cast

• Jayam Ravi as M. Vasu
• Nivetha Pethuraj as M. Swathi
• Aaron Aziz as Captain Lee Wei
• Ramesh Thilak as Venkat
• Arjunan as Appu
• Vincent Asokan as Captain Raghuram
• Jayaprakash as Chief Mahendran
• Rethika Srinivas as Lt. General Rythika
• Aarav Ravi as Ravi, Vasu's son
• Aathma Patrick as Terrorist
• Balaji Venugopal as Team head

Production

Tik Tik Tik mega poster

After working together in Miruthan (2016), Jayam Ravi was again impressed by a storyline narrated by Shakti Soundar Rajan and agreed to work on another film in March 2016. Jhabak Movies agreed to produce the venture. It was revealed that this would be the first Indian film in the space genre.^[13][14] The team began pre-production work thereafter, with Jayam Ravi describing it as the biggest film in his career.^[15]

Actress Nivetha Pethuraj joined the film's cast in September 2016. She was selected due to her knowledge of martial arts. She is trained in jujutsu and kickboxing.^[16] Aaron Aziz, a Malaysian-based actor who mostly performed in Malaysian and Singaporean drama and films, was selected as the lead villain,^[17] marking his entry into Tamil cinema.^[18] Jayam Ravi’s son, Aarav, plays the role of his son in this film too.^[19][20]

D. Imman composed the music for this film, continuing his collaboration with the director.^[21] There is no romance or songs in the film.^[22]

The team began filming in October 2016 at EVP Film City and Majestic Studio in Chennai.^[23] The film is also being shot in Munnar, where the shooting has been halted for a while due to the arrival of forest elephants near the shooting spot.^[24] The total duration of VFX scenes is 80 minutes in the film.^[25]

The teaser was released on August 15, 2017.^[26] The film was initially scheduled to be released on January 26, 2018, but was postponed^[27][28] and eventually released on June 22, 2018.^[29][30]

Music

The film's score and songs were composed by D. Imman. The title track was released on December 11, 2017. The song was sung by YogiB, Yuvan Shankar Raja and Sunitha Sarathy. The full album was released on January 4, 2018. The album has eight songs, four of which are instrumental songs (two theme songs and two karaoke songs). All the songs were written by Madhan Karky. This is Imman's 100th album. "Kurumba (Father's Love)" in the film featured real photographs and videos from Jayam Ravi's personal family collection.^[31]

Behindwoods rated the album 3 of 5 stars and said "Imman knocks the ball out of the park for a six to reach his century, and the ball is travelling to space!"^[32]

Critical reception

Tik Tik Tik received mixed reviews from the critics. Thinkal Menon of The Times of India praised the film for the laudable attempt and gave it 3.5 stars out of 5.^[33] Sreedhar Pillai of Firstpost praised it as a reasonably entertaining film with a novel concept and gave it 3 out of 5 stars.^[34] Manoj Kumar R of The Indian Express said that the concept is not original and gave it 4 out of 5 stars.^[35] Sowmya Rajendran of The News Minute praised the film for its impressive VFX scenes.^[36] Vikram Venkateswaran of the Quint called the film a harmless entertainer and gave it 3 stars.^[37] Sudhir Srinivasan of Cinema Express admired the efforts of director in this space genre film and gave it 3 stars.^[38]

Priyanka Sundar of Hindustan Times called it a film without logic and gave it 3.5 star.^[39] Gautaman Bhaskaran of News18 stated that the film have an impressive story, and gave it 3.5 stars.^[40] Kirubhakar Purushothaman of India Today called the film a typical underwhelming commercial film set in space, and gave it 3.5 stars.^[41] Director Venkat Prabhu and actor Arvind Swami praised the film for the effort.^[42][43] Vishal Menon of The Hindu termed the film simplistic in nature.^[44] J. Hurtado of Screen Anarchy noted that the film had many similarities to Armageddon (1998), one of which included the human mission of saving the Earth from an asteroid.^[45]

A success celebration was held for the film in Chennai on 29 June 2018.^[46]

Box office

Tamil Nadu theatrical rights of the film were sold for ₹10.5 crore.^[47] Tik Tik Tik grossed ₹ 3 crore on its first day and ₹ 12 crore in first three days in Tamil Nadu.^[48][49] It grossed US$ 45,724 in USA, MYR 2,23,745 in Malaysia, £ 10,480 in UK, A$ 34,493 in Australia, and NZ$ 3,424 in New Zealand in its opening weekend.^[50] The film collected US$ 68,812 in USA, £ 19,046 in UK, and A$ 49,176 in Australia by the end of the second weekend.^[51] Tik Tik Tik collected £ 20,888 in UK, and MYR 5,01,436 in Malaysia by the end of the third weekend.^[52] The film collected MYR 5,11,504 (₹ 86.6 lacs) in Malaysia by the end of the fourth weekend.^[53]

References

External links

• Tik Tik Tik on IMDb