Review: It begins abruptly, bang in the middle of action, and never looks back. Someone’s holding a gun to Shakti’s (Gautam Karthik) head, as the movie opens, and the pace just picks up from there. The story is that of corruption in engineering colleges, suffering students, scores of engineering grads roaming jobless, doing odd jobs, an FB post going viral… there’s even a suicide. But never does the movie turn preachy or maudlin – RJ Balaji’s clean, crisp jokes, mostly revolving around current affairs, like Make in India, ensures that. And never does it lose pace – thanks to a taut script, gripping narrative, and flashes of a Jackie Chan movie running in the background somewhere. And oh, a special mention for the BGM - quite apt. There are no unnecessary songs or drawn out scenes, and the action seamlessly shifts from the immediate to a flashback of sorts, only to bring us back neatly to the exact scene they left us in the beginning, tying the loose ends.
Loads of reference to current happenings (why, there’s even the speech of PM Modi declaring the 500 and 1000 rupee notes obsolete!), and life of engineering students of the state will make this movie an instant hit with all the been-there-done-that engineering grads. The situations are plausible, and Gautham Karthik never loses that cocky coolth, and holds the scenes on his own. He moves from being the lazy, laid-back college kid to the affronted guy to a roaring tiger kicking and punching the villains comfortably. Shraddha Srinath also does a commendable job, and emotes with ease. RJ Balaji is at his acerbic best – perhaps Kollywood has found the next Santhanam (since Santhanam has himself graduated to being the hero)! Looks like Gautam Karthik has got his calculations right – first Rangoon, and now Ivan Thanthiran.
Overall, though the immediate reaction upon hearing corrupt engineering college and computers in the same line could be, ‘Oh, Sivaji-The Boss aa?’, director R Kannan has deftly handled a subject line often used in Tamil cinema rather innovatively, with a good dose of tense, edge-of-the-seat moments, offset by intermittent humour. Of course, there are certain things that do seem impossible for a college dropout to be doing, but what’s a Kollywood movie if not slightly over the top? And we can willingly suspend disbelief for two hours of sharp and spiffy entertainment now, can’t we? Go watch!
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