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 story to make it palatable to a larger audience. However, the jokes are mostly based on someone’s physical appearance, and the mass moments with don’t really fit in well with the narrative, especially since he seems almost like a side character in the proceedings.
the film, needed to have given way more screen time to Saala, the protagonist. We are shown acts of kindness and magnanimity by him, but it's difficult to understand why he does these things and how they make him feel. There is little personality or dimension to his character, and as a result, the emotions don't hit when the stakes get high.
There are many surprising moments, such as what happens to three teenagers who fantasise about getting their hands on alcohol, or how an accident takes place. Manipaul shows great potential in staging these unexpected splurts of shock. There’s also an amusingly good level of detailing given to a lot of events, like a bar owner sprinkling beer on its floor during its opening ceremony (after all, it is his sacred water), or the way a murder is planned.
But these interesting ideas are always bogged down by scenes about how alcohol is harmful in every way. The film loses momentum in its second half. We get big educational speeches and unnecessarily long scenes, and the gang war is never explored to its full potential.
We get extremely graphic visuals to hammer down the message (what passes for a U/A rating with the Censor Board seems bafflingly unclear with every passing week). The impact of a tragedy becomes more shocking than saddening since the emotional threads aren’t convincingly established. Perhaps the makers wanted to avoid camera-facing preaching, but what we end up getting is still very direct, on-the-face messaging.
The intention is appreciable, and there’s always something intriguing going on. But the film needed to have been more tightly knit. is still very watchable and truly thought-provoking at times.
I just wish it had been fiercer and more focused. Rating:.
