'Naan Mahaan Alla' (Tamil, Revenge, 2010)
Director- Suseendhiran
Cast- Karthi, Kajal Agarwal, Soori, Jayaprakash, Vairavan, Lakshmi Ramakrishnan, Neelima, Krishnapriya, Ravi Prakash
‘Vennila Kabaddi Kuzhu’ centered on a bunch of rural youth and their passionfor kabaddi and the film was appreciated by both the audiences and the critics. With its refreshing characters and incidents, its realistic tone, and a shift from the oft-beaten track, it revealed Suseendhiran as a promising director.
Now he shifts to a totally different genre - the typical formula pattern where a superhero bashes a dozen rowdies to avenge the death of his near ones.
The expectation the director had raised after his successful debut film, is partially realised here. The earlier part is racy with delightful moments, and a natural flow of events. The film opens with four teenagers addicted to drugs and alcohol, they assault a couple on a deserted beach, brutally rapes the girl and kills the duo.
Then it shifts to the hero, a carefree youth celebrating New Year’s eve. With a cheerful disposition and a positive attitude to life, Jeeva has a devoted family and a group of loyal friends. His father (Jayaprakash, growing in stature from film to film) was a call taxi driver. The relationship between father and son is brought out well. Jeeva lands up as a loan recovery agent for a bank. The scenes where he gets empathetic with his client’s plight, as each come out with their own sob stories, provide some light moments.
The love angle pops up when he falls for Priya ( Kajal cute and bubbly, but sidelined totally later), whom he meets at a mutual friend’s wedding. The growing love between the duo has some very interesting moments. There is a scene at a bar where Priya’s father, a criminal lawyer, asks one of his clients, a rowdy, to dissuade Jeeva from pursuing his daughter, is a hilarious one.
When the film reaches a point where the ‘heroism’ of the protagonist needs to be brought out, the director falters. The scenes where the track of the characters in the opening scene converges with the hero’s, is the weakest link in the script. It appears as if the director had tried to merge two different scripts together. The climax fight too is a dampener, a typical hero-versus-a-dozen- armed-rowdies- scenario.
What is consistent throughout is Karthi’s performance. A live wire on screen, he is splendid, bringing out both the carefree spirit of Jeeva, and his angst and fury when a dear one is hurt. ‘Vennila Kabaddi Kuzhu may have belonged to Suseendhiran. But ‘Naan Mahaan Alla’ clearly belongs to Karthi.