It's a film that attempts to strike a different chord from the regular action-romance flicks. But while one can appreciate the director’s intent, his execution leaves much to be desired.
The director centres his theme on platonic friendship and sacrifice, with a love angle weaved in. But the script suffers from innumerable flaws, loopholes, unanswered questions, location confusion, and clash of logic. The director has deliberately tried to mislead the audience with some contrived scenes, when a straight narration would have sufficed. Like in the case of the relationship between college-mates Vijay and Gayatri (Prasanna, Sandhya), his best friend since childhood. Instead of the easy camaraderie between friends, what we get to see are intense looks, and expression of deep yearning in the other’s absence. The performances go wasted in such a scenario.
The college scene shifts to Gayatri’s place, where she with Vijay and the rest of her gang go to attend her sister’s engagement ceremony. Incidentally, Gayatri’s parents barely seem to know Vijay, though he’s supposed to be her best buddy since they were little ones.
There are shades of Aasai, when the sister’s intended groom Rajesh (an intolerable RK, with an unsightly wig to boot), takes a fancy for Sandhya, and schemes to get her as his bride. Rajesh manipulates situations, which finally result in Gayatri’s marriage being finalized to him.
Gayatri’s ‘eloping’ with Vijay; RK and his goons in hot pursuit; the flash-cut to the past depicting Gayatri’s tryst with Ravi a painter(Bala); all form part of the incoherent script. The final nail in the coffin is the ridiculous closing scene, where the director makes his last futile attempt to glorify his friendship saga.
FILM Manjal Veyil
DIRECTOR Vaseegaran
CAST Prasanna, Bala, Sandhya, R.K., Nizhalgal Ravi,
MS Bhasker, Tharika
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