Rathnam Movie Review

Ashwin

Rathnam is an action drama starring Vishal and Priya Bhavani Shankar in the lead roles. The film is directed by the much experienced Hari and the music is scored by Devi Sri Prasad.

Premise: Vishal is an angry young man who can’t tolerate atrocities against innocent people after seeing what his mother went through in his childhood. Priya Bhavani Shankar has a life threat in a land problem with some big shots in Andhra Pradesh. Vishal who has a lot of respect for her steps in to save her living.

Writing/ Direction:  Selective pieces of the puzzle are established during the title credits, they are done in an hurried yet interesting manner. The situations taking place surrounding the border of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu for the criminal’s convenience is shown in a clever and realistic way. Post which we see the hero’s introduction and an array of follow-up scenes to repeatedly establish his persona that has nothing unique and the limitless characters who surround his day-to-day life. A twist that is revealed nearly in an hour’s time from the start and the interval block are quite promising, but almost everything else in the first half is served like a random platter with no coordination to each other. Director Hari has tried to correct the terrible mistake he made in his recent past outings which is track comedy, but unfortunately Yogi Babu’s comedy track here which is solely based on alcohol jokes feels additionally stitched by simply and silently keeping the hero next to him. Director Hari’s screenplay is sadly old-school, some good stuff that exists in the script could have been presented well. Unlike the filmmaker’s previous works, there is not even a single smart scene in the movie. The cat and mouse game is a big bummer as it was very one-sided without creating any tension around the lead characters. The biggest issue is that the story focuses on many things rather than keeping it simple with main conflict and fluently forming the subplots around it, begins as a robbery subject, then has a scene that talks about child molestation, then goes into this illegal land grabbing zone and towards the end it preaches about the difficulty in medical education system. The treatment is weirdly very wild, the amount of violence that is showcased is beyond limits, very wannabe blood-shed graphic shots that are disgusting to view.

Performances:  Vishal looks super fit and he is perfect to be a routed angry young man. He is effortless when it comes to action and he proves his mettle once again in the fight sequences. His dialogue delivery is a big drawback, there are many loud portions and those are either too bassy or like a kid's voice. Priya Bhavani Shankar is tailor-made for her role that has multiple layers, she has very good importance and the story revolves around her. In the purpose of making things easy for the hero, Samuthirakani as an MLA uses his political power to do so and becomes a very weak character for the subject. Yogi Babu and Motta Rajendran’s humor work once out of ten places, and they take away so much screen-time, especially the former. The villains are useless, they have certain character depth in the backstory but they neither challenge the hero physically nor mentally in the present timeline which is the majority of the movie.

Technicalities: The songs are satisfying while listening, but they don’t match up with the musical treatment the movie demands. Not just the placements, they sound old. Devi Sri Prasad’s background score is decent and does justice to the situations more than they deserve. M.Sukumar’s camera work is solid, starting from the angles to using the right equipment that will race up the mood, particularly the 5-minutes single shot chase sequence looks sharp on-screen. Messed up editing throughout, the storytelling looks outdated because of it, as it is the film is less on substance, holding the suspense and revealing it much later is a dead fashion, this is implemented at many instances in the flow. The effort for the action portions are evident, but they don’t land powerfully due to the lackluster emotional purpose.

Verdict: The core conflict has enough plot elements to be a decent commercial flick if they were carefully piled and presented, by complicating things, it has become only a worse product both in terms of writing and craft.

RATHNAM - The Hari Stamp Fades Away Further!

Rating - 2/ 5.