Mohan Raja's Velaikaran'has two heroes.Besides Sivakarthikeyan, it is the dialogue that draws the applause of the audience in the course of narration.Normally in a film of this kind, with abundant scope for challenges between the hero and the villain, it is the hero's punch dialogues that will govern the screen play.But here, the dialogues of several characters create a greater, punching impact.From a playful, light-minded character running after his loved girls, Sivakarthikeyan has indisputably grown into a hero of purpose and performance.He measures his delivery of emotions as pointedly as possible.There is a perfect delivery of emotions even in the conventional funeral dance, that he performs to honor his murdered friend.Siva is as much a natural performer as Fahad Fazil is.The latter who has made his first entry into Tamil Cinema, is cutely sleek and impressive as a born capitalist wolf ,awaiting its prey in the form of its work force and the victims of heinous marketing trends.The underplay of the hero and the villain and the blowing dialogue narrative, are a special treat of the film.
The huge cast of the movie creates a lot of expectation leading to disappointments here and there.While Nayantara and Prakash Raj have been under utilized,actors like Rohini, Charliee and Vijay Vasanth {as Baghya }do cause significant emotional vibrations through their no nonsense performance.Rohini who tells her son how her stern looks submerged the nasty sexual overtures of her employers, makes her son grasp the concept of loyalty, with its roots firming up where and how they should. But Sneha's brief appearance is another failure on the part of the director to drive home the indispensable link of this character to the core of the theme and script .Owing to directorial drawbacks,like Nayantara,this fine actress also remains unimpressive.
There is an inherent layer of intelligence connecting the characters and the progress of events to the screen play.But Mohan Raja used this technique more effectively in Thani Oruvan which also dealt with a similar theme of the atrocities of aggressive marketing.Thani Oruvan which showcased a character bound conflict between a cop and a marketing criminal, definitely reflected greater dynamism in narration. Whereas here, the thematic and narrative scope for intelligence has been let down by aberration in focus.For instance, when most of us would have expected a dramatic twist in the climax scene, it came as a dampener with a mere radio talk of exhortation, exposing the exploiting mindset of crooked growth-oriented marketing theories and practices, making the middle class consumers more and more vulnerable to life killing food products, at the expense of its work force.But Sivakarthikeyan beautifully reflects the shock of distrust and disbelief caused by the secretly bullying schemes of the villainous Fahad Fazil ,with whom he blindly shared all his ideas and actions.
Anirudh could not take his music closer to the heart of the audience beyond the background score.His force of music swallows the lyrics to a great extent thereby driving a wedge between tunes and words.Mohan Raja is always known for emphatic portrayal of events and characters. Starting from his first film Jeyam,he has earnestly stuck to this singularity in his direction.His Jeyam,M.Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi,Santosh Subramanyan,Velayudham and Thani Oruvan made the audience sit up and watch the films scene by scene.But such a magic does not happen here.No doubt, the film has become a lofty ladder for taking Siva Karthikeyan to the next levels of his acting potential.No doubt, it has become an exquisite launch pad for Fahad Fazil to get closer to Tamil Cinema.No doubt the dialogue component, lifts the film to new heights.But somewhere Mohan Raja has gone wrong,to make the film more exciting ,with his innate and usual dynamics of film making.It is this self known pitfall, that has generated confusion in approach leading to a lack of compact and convincing narration.
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Meaningful review of the movie by the author.
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