Kaatru Veliyidai - Visitor Review 

By Abhinav P Mohanakrishnan 

If there is anything I have learnt from being an avid movie watcher over the past 10 years, some films are made for awards, some for the laughs and some deliberately made with numerous pop-culture references destined to fail the test of time. While many may disagree, I have always believed that a film is an important medium to raise a mirror to society. So when Mani Ratnam, a man who makes films for the middle class or if you will, the self-proclaimed upper middle class, it definitely makes you wonder what the man has to say. $15 later, I still don’t know the answer to that question. 

Fresh from the success of the realistic portrayal of live-in relationships in Okay Kanmani where you were in awe of his understanding of millennials and their emotions, Kaatru Veliyidai is an insincere dabble into the life of a male chauvinistic fighter pilot with daddy issues. While Karthi has given us some decent performances in the past, he doesn’t come across as a quintessential Mani Ratnam hero with the sensibilities of underplayed emotions though even a Kamal Haasan or an Aamir Khan couldn’t have saved the film. But with Karthi, there is this constant undercurrent of anxiety that during intimate sequences with Aditi, he may put his hands up in the air; you can almost hear “Iyyayo” from Paruthi Veeran playing in the background. 

With a greater exposure to world cinema and a more intelligent audiences compared to when Mr.Ratnam entered the industry, it baffles me that the man still heavily relies on visually pleasant sequences and brilliant music scores from the Oscar man to impress. I’d argue that in a film with a Kargil war backdrop, visual brilliance should not be your cornerstone. The shoddiness of the script is evident from the forced transition into song sequences and the pace set for the film begs the question if the tortoise really did beat the hare. 

If not for the economic investment and the fact that I needed to stay up late to pick up some relatives from the airport, I wonder if I would’ve made it through the film. 

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