Film: Keeripulla
Cast: Yuvan, Disha Pandey, Firose Khan, Saravanan, Ganja Karuppu
Director: Firose Khan
After Pasakkara Nanbargal, Firose wields the megaphone yet again with his son Yuvan as the hero in Keeripulla. Their home production, it’s an action-romance saga that centres around a pair of young star-crossed lovers. With chases and stunts and twists and turns weaved in for good measure, the director has attempted to keep the momentum going for the most part. But the excess of ‘shock’ elements, act as stumbling blocks through the film. Yuvan plays Keeri, a petty thief, with an exciting opening chase-scene.
In fact a couple of these chase-scenes in the early part are appreciable and enjoyable. Apart from being well choreographed, they have an element of unpredictability, ending in a way the audience wouldn’t have guessed. There is Keeri’s love affair with his childhood sweetheart Sandhya, who has an aged helpless father, and a selfish avaricious stepmother who has no qualms about selling her off to a flesh racketeer. You can’t get more cliched than that! The scenes involving the kingpin of the flesh-racket, a lecherous cop, and two thugs at war, seem all too familiar.
In another situation, Keeri saves Dorai, a stranger, from a group of rowdies and saves his life. The grateful Dorai (Firose), powerful and influential, promises Keeri any help he needs. We get an inkling of what is to follow. Yuvan has proved himself as an actor of calibre in his earlier films (Saattai), and he upholds that reputation. But he could have been better guided in the emotional moments. Disha Pandey fits in suitably. The screenplay thrives on it’s twists and turns, but some scenes appear forced, lacking conviction or proper justification — like Dorai’s attitude and behaviour in the latter part, which doesn’t gel. The scene where Keeri takes on a rapist-cop is impressively arranged, and a high point in the film. The pace slackens towards the latter part. The whole episode of thug Naga’s hunt for Dorai, is rushed through. An extra dose of melodrama is added in the bus-sequence, where the eloped lovers meet a sympathetic conductor.
It has a depressing finale, that makes one ponder if there couldn’t have been a more satisfactory ending to the romance-saga. But probably the director wanted to convey that even a hero can fail, when the odds are stacked too heavily against him! Firose has concentrated on keeping the momentum going, but the film could have done with a more balanced, coherent screenplay.