Director: M. Maran
Story: M. Maran
Cast: Arulnithi, Ajmal, Mahima Nambiar
Music: Sam C.S.
Time: 121 minutes
Bottom-line: Racy script that loses focus now and then
Yet
another addition to the next phase of Tamil cinema, where new directors come up
with innovative ideas for stories involving “grey” characters, Iravukku Aayiram Kangal is a murder-mystery “wrong man” film. The film stars Arulnithi, Ajmal and Mahima Nambiar in
the lead roles, with Vidya Pradeep, John Vijay and Chaya Singh in the
supporting roles.
Bharath
(Arulnithi) is a cab driver. His love interest is Suseela (Nambiar). One night,
when Suseela is assaulted by another cab driver, Ganesh (Ajmal) comes to her
rescue, but he later stalks her and behaves inappropriately. Suseela comes to
know that her client, Roopala (Singh) has also been blackmailed by Ganesh, who
has filmed her nude and has incriminating videos of her husband (Vijay) too.
Bharath decides to teach Ganesh a lesson, but when he goes to his house, he
finds a young woman shot dead, and soon, he is wrongly named as the murderer by
a neighbour. As Bharath runs away from the cops, the viewer joins him in the
hunt for the murderer and, more importantly, finding the true nature of
everyone around him.
 |
| Arulnithi as Bharath and Mahima Nambiar as Suseela |
Iravukku Aayiram Kangal
was certainly meant to be constructed as a proper mystery story – in the sense, the viewer who pays careful attention to the scenes and dialogues can
guess the “solution” before the characters in the film narrate the same via
flashbacks. Several scenes in the film are played again to show the viewpoint
of different players in the scene. At one point it feels like there are too
many people involved, but like Neram or Maanagaram, the story brings most of them together nicely. (Spoiler alert) The ending could
have been scripted in a better way – one that's more open-ended.
Instead of showing Bharath arrive at the writer’s house (which makes him
seemingly innocent), I would have preferred a black screen with the voice-over
of a newsreader reporting the murder. On that note, the other aspect of the
film that I liked was the clever use of the writer’s character as a MacGuffin.
 |
| Ajmal as Ganesh |
The
cinematography is put to good use, especially with the slow-motion and rewind sequences. The fight scenes could have been done away with or kept as brief as
possible. Again, pay attention to the little details to guess what’s going to
happen, or, as a last resort, watch the film a second time to catch what you
missed the first time. Having seen it twice, I still feel like there are a few
unanswered questions but you will surely understand the flow of events and have plenty of
“aha” moments.
To
summarise, Iravukku Aayiram Kangal is
a well-crafted mystery tale with fine-tuning needed in a few places. There
really isn’t any great acting; most dialogues and exchanges seem to take place as if they are being read from a book, with Ajmal being a notable
exception. Nevertheless, the plot is quite enjoyable.
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