After wielding the megaphone for three films, Ameer dons make-up in Yogi. The film is his home production, and the director-turned-hero has also penned the screenplay and lent his voice for a song too. The film’s storyline and direction is by Subramanya Siva. An unusual pairing, for while Ameer is known for his gritty plots (Ram, Paruthiveeran), Siva has credits in racy commercial potboilers.
Yogi centres on a slum rogue whose life is one of violence and crime. In his introductory scene on a train, he ruthlessly slashes the throat of a commuter as his friends snatch away the man’s valuables. The turn in Yogi’s life comes when he finds a baby, takes her to his shanty, and nurses her away from the prying eyes of his friends. He coerces his neighbour, a young mother (a deglamourised Madhumita leaves her mark), to breastfeed the baby. A couple of scenes stand out, such as Yogi’s tryst with a snake in his house, where both the savage and the sensitive side of the thug is revealed.
Another heart-stopping scene involved him returning home to find the baby covered with crawling ants.
On a parallel track is the hunt for the baby by the cops, and an avaricious stepfather’s devious actions to make sure that the baby is not returned alive. The narration in the earlier part moves at a brisk pace, the ambience is different, and the characters are engaging and closer to reality. For a first-timer, Ameer does a fairly competent job, his rough look and steely eyes suiting the role. It’s after Yogi thaws and takes the road to redemption that the pace slackens a tad. The final fight of fake heroism with Yogi bashing up the dozen armed goons should have had no place in a film otherwise realistic. Debutant Devaraj gets noticed as Yogi’s father, an unkempt, foul mouthed tramp whose cruelty towards his wife and children, (revealed in a flashback) was responsible for driving Yogi to a life of crime. Adequate in their roles are Vincent Ashokan as the baby’s step-father, and Snehan (the film’s lyricist) as Yogi’s friend.
There shouldn’t have been much problem for the team to tax their brains to improve the unfolding action. For, apart from some local flavour added, the plot is a straight lift, and an almost faithful replay of the novel- turned-South African film Tsotsi, an Oscar winner. There are shades of films like City of God too. It’s an appreciable effort, but with all that ‘inspiration’, surely the team could have reworked the script and come out with more engrossing fare.
