Dharmadurai – An unevenly played out drama!!! 

Bharath Vijayakumar

Plot: The life of a doctor who loves his job comes to a standstill after a personal tragedy.

Cast:

Vijay Sethupathy gets to play someone who goes through various transitions in the film. He is at home as the alcoholic and knocks it out of the park. It is when he plays a medical student and later a doctor that we miss a connection with the character. It is not that he plays them with indifference. He is actually quite neat in these portions as well. But everything including the supporting characters and the scenes in these portions just do not bring out the desired impact. Radhika does a role that she has mastered several times. Among the 3 leading ladies Aishwarya Rajesh manages to stand out despite a limited screen time. Tamana and Shrusti Dange are not bad but with them you get a sense that they are acting and not a performance which you get from the former.

The initial 30 minutes of Dharmadurai is quite superb. We are literally transported to the household where the events unfold. The tension is simmering and we are not talking about sickle wielding men running around. The drop in graph when the flashback begins is quite anticipated. But what really goes against the film is that everything from this point onwards merely plays out on the surface. This problem continues even after the story returns to the present. It is only the portions involving Aishwarya Rajesh that Seenu Ramasamy gets back the sort of hold he had on us during the initial portions of the film. And it is not that there is not enough meat in the proceedings. In fact a lot of things happen in the film. But only very few really impact us the way they ought to. The rest work like headlines. We get the news but not anything that is associated with it. It is definitely commendable that that the maker never resorts to melodrama. But he does lose out on scoring brownie points at crucial junctures. The closing portions again are crudely contrived. It was refreshing to see Vijay Sethupathy and a married Tamannah living under a roof as friends. But suddenly we are told that Tamanna’s husband is an evil guy so that we can buy into their divorce. These portions play out in haste and we really start moving away from the characters. All said and done, Dharmadurai keeps you adequately invested throughout. It does not play out like crests and troughs but what we have are crests and then plains in between.

Bottomline:

Dharmadurai starts off superbly and goes through phases of moderate interest. It shows glimpses of the captivating drama it could have been but falls short and ends up as an interesting story that is often narrated rather being played out on screen.

Rating: 2.75/5