Film: Chennaiyil Oru Naal
Director: Shaheed Kadar
Cast: Sarath Kumar, Cheran, Prakashraj, Prasanna, Sachin, Jayaprakash, Radhika, Parvati, Iniya
It was a film that had earned critical acclaim and commercial success due to its intriguing screenplay and novel presentation. And now the Malayalam film Traffic comes to regale Tamil audiences through its remake Chennaiyil Oru Naal.
Multi-layered, the film at one level is a thriller, a road journey and a race against time to save a human life. At another, it’s about a team of professionals who go beyond the call of duty for a humanitarian cause. And at a deeper level, it’s about humans, who battle their own inner demons, are on a journey of redemption.
The film has an ensemble cast of actors who fit in suitably. The characters are well fleshed out in the screenplay, each actor getting his space. It has a multi-structured screenplay (siblings Bobby-Sanjay), where seemingly unconnected characters and incidents intersect at a point. The director has adopted a non-linear style of narration. A fairly recent trend in Indian films, the narrative style is inspired by films like ‘Amores Perros’, ‘Babel’, and ‘Crash’.
The film opens with a series of unconnected events in Chennai. A panic-stricken girl in a car chased by a gang of eve teasers; a disgraced traffic constable (Cheran), suspended for taking a bribe; Kartik (Sachin) on his first day of job at a TV channel, all excited that he would be interviewing a superstar (Prakashraj); a doctor (Prasanna), who had committed an indiscreet act; and the superstar’s daughter fighting for life in a Vellore hospital, in urgent need of a heart transplant.
Myriad characters, destiny bringing them together. Director Shaheed Kadar has captured the essence and the feel of the original. The film has a racy pace and an edge- of-the-seat feel throughout. The flaws are minor and do not mar the flow.
It’s an exciting three-hour journey as the team on a life saving mission from Chennai to Vellore, rushes through traffic bottlenecks and other hurdles. There is the Chennai city commissioner, (Sarath Kumar, the co-producer too), who initially cynical about the success of the mission, refuses permission for the journey, but relents and with his team of dedicated men puts in his best efforts. It’s a triumph of human spirit against insurmountable odds.
The irony cannot be missed, when the self-obsessed superstar berated by his wife (Radhika) for being a failure as a husband and a father, looks out of the window and sees the tagline ‘Born to win’ on the poster of his film.
There are moments that touch an emotional chord. Like the grieving parents of Kartik (Jayaprakah-Lakshmi Ramakrishnan) caught in a dilemma about donating their son’s organ. Moral issues are dealt with beautifully, and social messages (like organ donation) subtly conveyed. Just under two hours of viewing time ‘Chennaiyil....’ is a celluloid journey not to be missed.
