Oozham Review - Works despite a little predictability!!!

Bharath Vijayakumar

Jeethu Joseph had clearly stated in his interviews that Oozham is not his typical thriller but a revenge drama. In tune with the film's tagline "It's just a matter of time", everything is laid out for us in the first half hour of Oozham. From then on the stakes are pretty clear and we know where the film is heading to. But "How?" is the prominent question here and to his credit, Jeethu Joseph has managed to do this in an engaging manner.

Plot:

The hero avenges the people who decimated his family - one by one.

The constant niggle you have with Oozham is it plays out like the hunter becomes the hunted scenario. Perhaps this is how the maker wanted it to be and justice has been done to that. But a cat and mouse sort of a game really would have made this a lot more interesting. The villains are all ruthless in the beginning and once they are on the backfoot they seem totally clueless. There is not even a speedbreaker in the path of the hero. Everything happens as he anticipates and he hardly breaks a sweat as the villains are only too easy to oblige. That said, the scenes are kept engaging and something is always happening. In a sense, Oozham does work like a star driven vehicle where the hero is a one man army (there is even a dialogue referring to Prithviraj as this) but it confidently eschews of any other associated gimmicks to make him seem larger than life.

The actors are good but if you are used to Jayaprakash's voice in Tamil films then the dubbing for him here is a mismatch. It diluted a little impact, atleast for me. The role too could have been sketched with more care. For someone who is a cunning businessman and all powerful, his absolute helplessness is not brought out convincingly. The police is relegated to the background too conveniently. All these aside, Oozham works as an engaging watch because of an urgency in the narration and some action in every other scene.

Bottomline:

An engaging revenge drama that delivers the goods. The one sided battle is what makes it a little monotonous.

Rating :2.75/5