Kee opens with a firefly buzzing happily over a pool of water, when a frog jumps at it and treats itself to a good dinner. But wait! There’s another predator right behind, and the frog is now the firefly. It is this predatory quality in our human nature, which makes it right for people to prey upon the weak, that Kee wants to discuss.
But here’s what’s missing — an inventive screenplay. Instead, the narrative is clogged by elements that hamper the story line. Siddharth (Jiiva) is a happy-go-lucky college student, whose extraordinary genius has given us the Baasha virus. All it takes is a single tap on his iPhone, and the virus infects dozens of mobile phones of... only women! A virus which thinks like a male.
Anaika Soti leads the list of commercial elements in the film. As Vandana, a TV reporter who hardly reports to work, Soti is pleasing on the eye, and has managed a meaty role for herself. There is also Diya (Nikki Galrani), whose character has little influence on the base story, but bizarrely finds herself inserted into the climax.
We’re also introduced to Siddharth’s parents — a charged up Rajendra Prasad, and Suhasini Maniratnam. Why they exist, and what purpose they serve the main story, no one knows. In one particular sequence, where the mother accuses the father of not caring enough for the son, Prasad goes, “Appa paasam beer bottle madri. Kulukkunathaandi pongum!” (A father’s affection is like a beer bottle. It only rises when you shake it!) That’s the third best among the lot of corny dialogues, which were written keeping the male audience in mind.
Then there is Govind Padmasoorya aka GP, who is full of facial hair and sex appeal. As Shiva, the mastermind black hat hacker, GP looks menacing, but turns out to be a mild-mannered villain. In another of those random sequences that the film is full of, we’re shown that Shiva packs a pretty punch. But right when you expect a massive showdown between the hero and the villain in the climax, Shiva concedes defeat after a brief tussle, and then proceeds to speaking in metaphors, with a touch of casual sexism of course, till the hero arrives at ‘That’s enough small talk. Time to kill you’ moment.
The hacking scenes itself seem outlandish, and too far removed from reality. In a scene where the villain announces himself to the hero, a single tap on his phone leads to ATMs spewing out cash, almost everyone’s phones being infected, and electric cables coming loose off the poles. The sequence ends with the hero swinging a rubber tyre at a transformer to cut power, and save the day for people in peril. Shockingly, the director chooses to explain how flinging the tyre at a power source worked, but leaves it to our imagination to figure out how the villain gained access to our phones by air transmitting a virus!
When asked about the meaning of the word Kee, director Kalees described its Tholkappiam origins, and explained it as something with an “equal amount of good and bad” in it.
Unfortunately, the film is balanced in favour of the bad.