Put aside the mainstream Indian films, even I don't watch them. The parallel films, especially in the recent years, it is taking a big leap towards the Internation stage. It is not all about melodrama and typical romance with sexually teasing songs that trademarks Indian films, that's commonly known as masala films. The young filmmakers exploring the new path that earlier Indian films never dared to enter. This is a Kollywood film, about a south Indian metro city, Chennai, that unfolds the dark secrets of the chain snatching network.
After debuting with an average film, the director came strongly to highlight the theft menace in the city of 8 million population. Snatch theft is so common and easily committable crime in the third world, but chain snatching is specially tagged to Indian subcontinent. The Indians love gold, because they culturally very attached it. It is a worrisome thing in all over India today, but the director was successful to disclose how this thing works, probably the first time in Tamil cinema that entirely centralised on it alone.
The film opened by unleashing some mysterious event where an abductee was tortured to death. But very soon the flashback commences to reveal the reason behind such act. So all the focus shifts to a small happy family of two brothers and their parents. When the younger brother seeks a motorcycle to impress his girlfriend, his family denies to fulfill his desire. As he's desperate not to lose his girlfriends, decides to take a wrong path not knowing one day it directly affects his own family. The remaining part of the film covers the crucial turning point of the tale before concluding emotionally.
"This world is slave to the man with money."
I think most of the actors, especially main cast was new and/or second string actors, but they all well done in their respective parts. The storytelling was very good, so once again the credit must go to the screenwriter who is the director himself. Like I mentioned earlier, it is a very important film for the Indians and outsiders to learn about the Indian crime. Besides chain snatching, it also goes length to cover what happens to those goods and how it was forwarded to the next stage of the crime world. So the story was largely concentrated on the thieves to let us know how it all works.
I'm truly impressed with how Kollywood is focusing to transform the industry by trailing the Korean film style cop, thief kind of dark tone themes. One such example was the breathtaking recent crime-thriller 'Interrogation'. Great characters and stories, but still connects strongly with the local culture when presented them on the screen.
This story was developed with lots of inputs like how the middle class family suffers and managing a girlfriend in todays hi-fi world. In a couple of scenes, the father-son's talk was very moving. In other side, the thieves ideology of their work totally disgusts. But it's good to know a few of their strategy. We learn most of the things like this by watching films.
Probably no one heard of it, I mean not a large population, including me. But when I heard some people praising it on the social network, I quickly on to it. Glad that I watched it, and I'm surprised for its production quality. For the Indian standards, it is surely a gem and for the Internation audience, it might be an unexpected, especially the story wise. If you are not an Indian films follower, it's time to change your stance. As the Indian economy booming, their films as well transforming. There are many awesome flicks released lately and this is one of those. You must check it out if you are interested, but surely worth a watch.
8/10
