Real-life happenings have been the inspiration for director Ramesh’s earlier plots. Like the engaging realistic-thriller Kuppi (2006), which depicted the aftermath of Rajeev Gandhi’s assassination and the fate of some of those involved. But this time, the director seems to have taken inspiration from the Spanish thriller The Body (2012), for the plot of his bilingual Oru Melliya Kodu.
Tweaked to suit Indian nativity, It’s Kannada version Game was released earlier this year. The death of a woman entrepreneur, her missing corpse and the investigation into it, forms the core of the plot. The narrative pace may be quite leisurely for a thriller and there may be moments that seem repetitive. But the twists and turns in the latter half help sustain interest to a large extent.
The director has adopted a non-linear style of story-telling. It’s a happening of one night, the narration shuttling between the present and past. The story begins when the security guard at a mortuary is found unconscious. The body of Maya, who ran a pharmaceutical company and had died of cardiac arrest, is found missing from the morgue even before a post-mortem could be conducted and forensic reports checked.
Linking the incidents, the investigating cop Sakthi (Arjun) suspects foul play. Sakthi, with his own demons to battle, was determined to nail the killer. There is an element of suspense in the early scenes with a promise of an intriguing scenario to follow. Maya’s husband Akshay (Shaam) is called in for questioning and detained at the lab, with most of the happenings taking place around it. Shaam is just about adequate in his portrayal of Akshay. Action king Arjun doesn’t seem to be at his best here. The actor seems uninvolved and listless, and surprisingly, even goes overboard in his emotional-act. And for his fans, there is not much of an action-scene here either. Aqsa infuses freshness in the role of Bhoomi, the young mistress of Akshay. But her poor lip-sync is distracting. Ilaiyaraaja’s background score enhances the feel. The lighting of the interiors and the colour tones used (cinematographer Sethu Sriram) help sustain the mood.
The killer and his motive are exposed in an early scene, but as the narrative progresses and skeletons come tumbling out of cupboards, one gets to understand that the exposure was just a tiny element of the suspense-quotient in the plot. Manisha Koirala makes a comeback to Tamil cinema with this film. Koirala fits the bill as Maya, Akashay’s possessive wife with a playful domineering attitude towards her husband, even as she keeps a hawk’s eye on his activities.
How the younger Akshay gets married to the older wealthy woman is revealed in a flashback. A hit-and-run case, drunken driving and a general callousness towards human life, form a part of the plot. As the credit titles scroll at the end, a socially relevant message is conveyed. Though not one of the best scripts to come out in the suspense-crime format, the film could be a one-time watch for lovers of the genre.