I watched this movie last week, and felt it was a wonderful addition to the genre movies that have been releasing as of late. The ideas, the pre-production, and the execution really work for the most part.

What made this movie so great, is the pre-production, I feel. In my opinion, a lot of Tamil directors now, don’t have the style of working where they are meticulous in ‘locking’ everything before shooting. Here, the director (who is someone that has a very deep understanding of the filmmakers that inspired him I feel) has done the work beforehand to make a really tight thriller, and pulled out all the stops in planning with every department, to make sure the audiences feel every moment. And it shows. The tense interrogation at the suspect’s car, with the train passing at the end of the scene for example, works because of the detailed planning. Even the writing is very well thought out. For example, the intro with the two policemen pays off twice: once with the parallel to the real killer, and once when their car stalls at a crucial moment.

This is a movie that has really benefited from the lack of ‘commercial elements’ like hero’s introduction, songs, fight sequences etc. When I was watching, I felt like there were still remnants of this, namely: the starting portions with the family celebrating Ashok Selvan becoming a cop, the motif of Ashok Selvan’s superhuman reflexes, and the female character mostly being written into the plot for masala movie reasons. But this was not that big of an issue because everything else worked so well.

Story-wise, if I could nitpick, I felt that they focused too much on the red-herring killer, to the point that when they finally explain the real killer’s story, it feels overly long. But then again, the prologue ties the two killers’ stories together properly with the message as well. The only part I didn’t really like was the climax when Ashok must save the heroine. For me, the writing here felt a bit too commercial compared to the rest of the movie,and the execution of the scene also felt small and anti-climatic.

When I was watching, I felt maybe Sarath Kumar’s character would be the killer all along, with his character purposely dissuading Ashok’s investigation, but also teaching him, in order to show off. I thought that him offering to meet the guy alone at his house was to prevent Ashok from realising it’s actually his house. To me, this would also be interesting, as it parallels the first serial killer’s story. Both Ashok and that killer would have a father figure that betrayed their trust. But I liked the way the film’s story proceeds overall as well.

Share your thoughts too if you’d like :)