Nerungi Vaa Muthamidathe – A Road Less Traveled

Bharath Vijayakumar

Lakshmy Ramakrishnan made a rather interesting directorial debut with Aarohanam, a film which dealt with bipolar disorder and caught the fancy of a few notable critics. Her next offering Nerungi Vaa Muthamidathe (NVM)has just hit the screens and what does she have in store for us this time?  

Plot:

NVM is a road film that involves interplay of multiple plots woven around diverse characters. A lorry driver undertakes a tough task of delivering certain goods for the sake of his trusted master. Little does he know that he is only a small part of a large network the aim of which is something destructive.

Cast:

Newcomer Shabeer makes a decent debut. A character in the film compares his looks to Amitabh Bachan and it does not look overboard. Veterans like Y.G. Mahendran ,Ambiga, Thalaivasal Vijay and Viji Chandrasekhar make their presence felt in interestingly conceived characters.

Hits and Misses:

The striking aspect of NVM is it’s unique treatment. The central knot is actually that of a racy thriller which could have even been molded into a commercial potboiler with a mass hero fitting in as the protagonist. But NVM is anything but this. Despite a clutter of happenings and characters thrown in, it does take it’s own sweet time to move on. Where Lakshmy Ramakrishnan succeeds is that despite not investing a great deal of our emotions with the characters their identities does register with us. If the former too had happened NVM would have soared higher. Or probably this is a different kind of cinema that achieves what it had intended to. The backstories of the characters are narrated crisply and yet with maximum impact. The revealing of the origin of an inter-caste romance between a couple on the run in particular, is very impressive.In a film that runs for less than two hours there are probably a few scenes that actually did not need to be there. Most notorious among them is the initial scene involving Thambi Ramiah. It extends well beyond even after testing our patience. The music by Madley Blues is refreshing but wacky in terms of BGM at a few places. In a scene where the short tempered Y.G. Mahendra is letting his anger out we have a score that implies something completely irrelevant.

Bottomline:

Nerungi Vaa Muthamidathe provides a rather pleasant journey with very few speed breakers. The problem is that neither the drama soaks us in completely nor the suspense angle, that despite being maintained throughout, brings us to the edge.   

Rating: 2.5/5