Attu - A well made film!!!

Bharath Vijayakumar

Films about gangsters, henchmen and their political nexus have been done to death in Tamil cinema. After romance, this is probably the genre that most debutants have explored till now. Rathan Linga takes us through one such journey.

Plot : Friendship, love and betrayal in the life of a henchman.

The fresh casting of Attu works in its favour. The plot has no new dimensions in relation to the other movies in this genre. Hence the fresh faces help. It takes some time to warm up to Rishi Rithvik who plays the titular character. But he makes an impression.  He hardly seems to be performing and it looks like he has been Attu all his life! The story travels on him but he is just one among the many characters of the film. Each actor brings a certain something to the character he/she plays and every character however minor it maybe, is extremely well defined. You have them in a scene and you sort of are able to get at-least a gist of their personality. This is the biggest accomplishment of Rathan Linga. Yogi Babu helps us to keep smiling in what is otherwise a rather grim film.

The background score of Bobo Shashi keeps the narrative extremely lively. The stunts are nicely done. The technical team along with the director have ensured that we feel we are part of the action 

and have spent a little more than 2 hours along with these characters in their neighbourhood.

The violence in Attu is quite disturbing. It is in your face a few times and inlcudes a gruesome murder in the climax that is prolonged for quite sometime. The censor certificate at the start of the movie read U/A and this should be one of the biggest jokes in recent times. While the treatment warrants a definite mention, what works against Attu is that it travels mostly on expected lines. It also sort of plays out like a docu drama at times. We have scenes that work more like episodes and a certain flow isn't there with some scenes even ending abruptly.

Bottomline

Rating: 2.75/5