Way off the mark

Centered around sibling bonding, Vettai is about the timid Thiru, and his hot blooded fearless younger sibling Guru, the latter motivating the former to come out of his shell and take a bold s

Centered around sibling bonding, Vettai is about the timid Thiru, and his hot blooded fearless younger sibling Guru, the latter motivating the former to come out of his shell and take a bold stand. With the suave Madhavan and the handsome hunk Arya essaying the lead roles, and with Lingusamy at the helm, one expected the film would be an engaging experience. But with its flippant screenplay and lackluster narration, the celluloid journey soon turns into a test of endurance.

The director, not quite sure whether his film should be a comedy or an action thriller, or a story of sibling bonding, makes it an unpalatable cocktail of a hotchpotch of scenes. With his family in the police force since generations, Thiru (Madhavan) is persuaded against his will to join the force after his father’s death. Guru (Arya) often substitutes secretly for his timid brother in many a tricky situation, the accolades going to Thiru.

Having earned the ire of Annachi (Rana trying hard to lip sync the Tamil lines), and the latter’s friend-turned-foe Mari (Muthukumar of Veppam), the siblings are in trouble when the heat is turned against them.

The narration turns unintentionally funny when Guru lets himself be bashed black and blue by the rowdies, just to provoke his wheel chair ridden brother to bounce back on his feet. The trick works as Thiru painfully gets up, climbs laboriously over a netted barrier, and jumps to Guru’s rescue.

One expects a certain amount of logic within the limits of the genre. But the director seems to have taken his audience a tad too much for granted!

The romantic angle for the siblings is the sisters Jayanthi and Vasanthi (Amala, Sameera). Here you have to hand it to the director, that he’s made sure that their roles get equal footage. So much so that when Thiru marries Vasanthi, Jayanthi like in the festival take-one-get-one-free offer, accompanies her sister to Thiru’s place, the foursome cutting a cozy picture. It’s difficult to believe that it’s the same Lingusamy who had made such well-crafted entertainers as Anandam and Run. Vettai is neither funny nor engaging. And its roughly 150 minutes of viewing time, only makes the whole experience a more tiring and an exhausting one.

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