Using a voiceover-heavy introduction scene to establish a crime universe is a well-trodden path, and debutant director SD Manipaul’s is no different. The good news is that it is a fairly neat setup about a gang war revolving around bars. We have Saala (debutant Dheeran) and his father figure Guna (Aruldoss) on one side and Thangadurai (Charles Vinoth, who has a singular-but-effective stock expression throughout) on another.
We are in North Chennai, the runner-up destination for violence in Tamil cinema, behind Madurai. The characters look their parts, and the locality is shot well. Ravindranath Guru is the cinematographer, and his camera uses very little filtering, making the frames feel believable.
The setup lays the foundation for a gritty, epic gangster drama. The not-so-good news is that makes very little use of this setup. We’re parallely introduced to Punitha (Reshma Venkatesh), an anti-alcohol activist, and we spend a lot of time seeing her speak about the ills of drinking.
There is evidently a great deal of research that has gone into , but this research doesn’t come out organically. Writing a social activist character is never easy, and most of Punitha’s dialogues are either data points or advice to others. Reshma herself, though, plays the part with conviction, bringing a sense of sincerity to Punitha.
The narrative threads do not come together coherently, and instead, we get a lot of jokes and mass moments. I understand the need to commercialise a serious s.