Velaikkaran Tamil Movie | Sivakarthikeyan | Fahadh Faasil

Velaikkaran, a social drama directed by Mohan Raja hits the screens today. With a huge ensemble of supporting stars and Nayanthara playing the female lead, does Velaikkaran live up to the immense expectations? Glance down to know.

Velaikkaran doesn’t follow the tried and tested commercial Tamil film template with comedy taking the front seat. Mohan Raja wastes no time to establish what type of film the audience has paid for, driving the proceedings forward with one powerful message after another, in a pretty engaging manner for the majority of the first half.

Sivakarthikeyan as an ordinary ‘Velaikkaran’ who fights against food adulteration by leading food MNCs including the one that employs him. He in the company of his sidekicks, played by RJ Balaji, Sathish and Robo Shankar, give us a few laughable moments now and then, but Raja is keen not to dilute the intensity in the script. This role is sure to open up more avenues for the actor who is largely looked up for his comedy.

The research the story department has made is commendable and lifts the movie noticeably. The dialogues are extremely powerful and SK delivers them nonchalantly. Watch out for the scene where the director relates MNC workers with local goons.

Post Thani Oruvan, Mohan Raja seems to be a different man altogether. One could see the effort he and his team have put forth for Velaikkaran. The way the MNC strategies are woven around an entertaining first half is where Raja scores his brownie points. However, the second half gets a little superficial and preachy.

The message part in the film also stands out and the element of socialism works to the film's advantage. The art work by Muthuraj looks unbleached and adds value to the script. Not an easy deal to recreate a slum set like the way he has done.

Ramji’s visuals provide the much-needed grandeur to a message-oriented script as such. The slum scenes have a natural and lively treatment, while the song sequences are a treat to the eyes.

Anirudh deserves a round of applause for consistently giving chart buster tracks and helping the film gain hype before release. Karuthavanlaam Galeejaam is one of the most popular tracks of the year and with the visuals, Ezhu Velaikkara could well climb up the charts. Unlike some other Anirudh films, the BGM here is not overpowering and suits the mood of the film. Two romantic numbers are, however positioned as a mere formality.

Sivakarthikeyan’s romance track with Nayanthara does not carry enough weightage as the script does not demand it, yet the ‘Lady Superstar’ is used pretty effectively and she fits the bill perfectly with her modern looks and subtle expressions.

Fahadh Faasil as we know is a very natural actor and one should say he has indeed made an admirable debut in Tamil and is the cynosure of all eyes whenever he is on screen.

Apart from them, there are many experienced actors like Charlie, Rohini, Sneha and Vijay Vasanth, playing little roles in the overall scheme of things.

The length of the movie is a downer, maybe the second half could have been more crisp. On the whole Velaikkaran has a powerful script with some exciting moments but some may find the film to be preachy.

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Richie Tamil Movie Review

Rating: 3/5

In a recent interview, Malayalam director Arun Kumar Aravind said he likes Pulp fiction a lot because of the editing possibilities of its narrative. Ulidavaru Kandanthe from Rakshit Shetty was apparently a similar experiment looking through the perspective of each person who was part of that particular story. At the end of the film, Rakshit also mentioned about certain other possibilities and Gautham Ramachandran has definitely tried to explore that aspect of the original. Towards the climax of the film, we can see the earnestness to be creative, but the straight forward narrative reduces the creative kick we get as a viewer.

Richie is this rowdy who had a bad childhood which he spent mostly in a juvenile home. At one point he happens to know that the man who made his life miserable is in town and the film talks about how he reacts to that and how this eventually becomes an interesting story for a journalist.

Those of you who have seen the Kannada original version would know that how Richie as a character isn’t necessarily the central protagonist. When Gautham Ramachandran interprets his version, he is making Richie his title protagonist and thus there is considerable reduction in screen space for other characters. The movie is only 110 minutes long, which is almost 40 minutes lesser than the original. May be because of the lack of acceptance the film faced in Kannada, the creators here chose to keep the narrative simple. But as someone who prefers interesting experiments, this simplification of things was something that I couldn’t really accept.

Nivin Pauly is convincing as Richie in terms of body language. His weakness here is the dialect. He is playing a local rowdy and the Malayalamish Tamil was a downside of his otherwise tidy performance. The space for Shraddha Srinath is lesser than what her Kannada counterpart Tara got. Natty gets the other major role and Gautham has given some good subplots to this character to make the foundation strong. The other major 3 characters in the Ulidavaru Kandanthe have been reduced considerably and this being a hero driven vehicle could well be the reason behind that. Prakash Raj, Raj Bharath, Lakshmi Priyaa Chandramouli, Aadukalm Murugadoss, Elango Kumaravel etc. are the prominent faces in the film.

Even though Gautham Ramachandran has diluted it for the sake of easier understanding, I did like the way he used the scope of interpretation. He has changed the placement of certain scenes and added certain sequences to generate a curiosity in the minds of people who might have seen the Rakshit Shetty version. The overall technical quality of the film is superior to the Kannada version. The quality music and score of the original has been retained. The frames added rawness to the story telling.

Richie is a good remake that may not have the same craft of Ulidavaru Kandanthe. It is less complex, but original in its own credit. The segment of audience who hasn’t seen the original but likes experiments which aren’t driven by just one character can give this one a shot.