What attracted me to watch Thegidi on the first day was its brilliantly made trailer suggesting it to be a gripping detective mystery flick. And once i realized it was under CV Kumar's banner i was glad to have chosen to watch this movie for the man has trend-setting movies in his track-record.
Thegidi opens with our hero Ashok Selvan (Vetri in movie) (whose voice reminds me of a young Suriya ,although looks wise he resembles Kohli when frowning nd Rahane when smiling :D )receiving an offer in a detective firm after graduating in criminology(thank god not an engineer :p)He then passionately goes about his detective work collecting all the information about his subjects (who have all been men thus far :p)And when his next subject is Janani Iyer (Madhu in movie)he breaks his protocol of not to get close to his subject in order to set a previous misunderstanding straight with her. A love sequence follows via 2 songs but thanks to the wonderful music, beautiful vocals by Sathyaprakash and Abhayjodhpur, thanks to the captivating eyes of Janani Iyer nd the natural acting by the leads,this sequence moves breezily nd just when the sailing goes smooth director P Ramesh brings a dramatic twist from which the speed of the movie really takes off ! Revealing any further would do disservice to first time watchers and hence explicit synopsis ends here.
The 2 sequences leading to the interval fills the viewers with tension nd the thrills that such a genre ought to do nd the icing on the cake is Nivas K Prasanna's scintillating background score ! Post interval , a major difference in this script as opposed to any other movie of this genre is to reveal whose the hunter (which due to the limited characters in the movie,cant be concealed any further anyways) but to keep the motive of the hunter as any body's guess and trust me no guess will hit bulls-eye because the motive in this movie is a fresh yet alarming one due to its possibility of being a true one in our real life !The clues for the headhunter is cannily sprayed throughout the movie but will be again difficult to guess until the very end. The movie although has an open ending (again whose clue was there to be seized by a keen observer) making room for an intriguing sequel.
Apart from the lead casts performance and music , dialogs too deserve a special mention be it the ones used in during Ashok's hiring , or be it Janani Iyer's introduction scene citing eye to eye contact , or be it switching a call from mobile to Pco to prevent tapping all showing immaculate attention to detail thats been put in by the crew. Editing was crisp; a run time of 2 hours is a testimony to that so does a single climb up the stairs shown in multiple shots. DoP shows his mettle in a scene where Ashok tries to break into a house. Another special mention is the Nambi character played so naturally serving as a comic relief and not to forget Jayaprakash (he is in 90% of movies nowadays nd yet seems to show considerable variation in each of his characters ! kudos to the veteran)in an enigmatic role !
Verdict : Just like how Goli soda is the mass entertainer of the year (beating the biggies that released earlier in the same genre ) ,Thegidi is the movie to beat in thriller genre for the year ! :D a parable for the umpteenth time reminding us that the content ,more than star power or budget, is the real King :)
