'Vettaiyan' Review: Solid investigative drama, despite commercial constraints—a refreshing non-superstar film.

 

Overview:

Amidst many big hero films that cater to the stars, leaving a lot to desire in terms of story and creative choices, Vettaiyan is a very interesting superstar film that never requires its lead actor to showcase his stardom.  A monumental task of narrating a story with a huge star is nearly achieved in this flick, despite some dilutions.

Creative choices and some nuances uplift this film that definitely has a lot going its way despite many shortcomings, which include the film being bogged down at times by its attempt to commercialise the moments.

Performances:

The ensemble casting here is a mixed bag. Rajinikanth is superb as the subtle Athiyan, even with some moments leaving it to the 'superstar'. Fahadh Faasil is absolutely brilliant as Patrick, who gives this techie character a natural and humane touch that goes far beyond the buttons and gadgets. Amitabh as Sathyadev has a magnanimous presence that compensates for his shallow character development. The other cast of Dushara, Ritika, Kishore perform their parts convincingly. Rana Daggubati and Manju Warrier are however left out with poor characters, the latter to be precise.

Cinematography and Music:

The camera works are functional for this film with mocobots for fights lending little impact. The film has a gritty, not-so colourful tone to it helping in registering the mood.

Music by Anirudh aids in staging the film as a mainstream film with ample elevations and tracks to move the proceedings. The repetitive usage of main track does not disturb the story and it is indeed an advantage.

Themes:

The film deals with many social themes and moral dilemmas, which includes commentary on fake encounters, injustice aimed at poor people, educational institution scams and many other sensitive issues. Indeed a bold attempt to discuss such issues in a big film.

Writing and Treatment:

The film starts off as any usual investigation drama with character expositions and issues hinted at. We get a do-gooder doing something revolutionary, ends up finding a bigger issue and revealing many other issues linked to it. The film has many other usual tropes of a crime drama with social commentary. But imagine all these with a huge star at its centre, it becomes an uphill task to unfold this drama, whilst catering to the star.

Just like any other filmmaker with a star project, TJ Gnanavel wraps up his star-celebratory aspects in the first 20 mins with an intro fight and song, but is quick enough to dive into the story. The actual story starts as an ideological battle between a cop who relies on encounter for instant justice and a judge who believes justice hurried is justice buried. This conflict is built quite strong till the midpoint where we get the cop introspecting his actions and methods making for a terrific plot point.

We get no bursts of twists and reveals, we don't get explosive music-backed scenes, but instead we get solid scenes of writing and direction. Even the much bigger reveal at interval is dealt not as a sudden burst of truth, but through the lens of an officer with an encounter gone wrong.

The protagonist Athiyan has a solid character arc. This officer who comes at the end to gloriously finish off the task is later handed over with a bigger problem to dig at. This officer whom we don't see investigating cases is now given with a much bigger case to delve through, but not do it in his usual way. Like Master(2021), we get a huge star who, in a way, becomes responsible for a mistake that echoes much bigger to his moralities, who resorts to mend his errors. This attempt of pointing the mistakes done by the characters played by huge gallery pleasing stars is a really bold move to be appreciated.

The film does go for some low hanging fruits that comes off as sporadic moments of hero elevations, but once the conflict sets in, the writing organically sets up for such moments with a great elevation in the latter half credited solely to its build-up and writing.

This is neither a great film nor a ground-breaking attempt, but its intention to de-glamourize its leading star and write a story that has its protagonist as a character but not as a saviour is something to appreciate. 

One aspect to be discussed is the way with which directors showcase scenes of abuse, which is shown a lot in this film with graphic details. If not highly significant to the story, makers should consider to either indicate such events nor shadow such points rather than continuing to show such moments repeatedly.

Conclusion:

Vettaiyan is a solid investigation cum procedural drama, albeit falling prey to some star pleasing attempts, puts forward a highly convincing drama led by Rajinikanth, the character. This is certainly not a perfect film, but an attempt towards the right direction of star films.