Review - Samar tries to thrill

by Bharath Vijayakumar

Vishal's Samar has surprisingly had a low key release. For someone who was known as the heir apparent to Vijay very early in his career the last few years have been quite silent for Vishal, apart from his performance in Bala's Avan Ivan. Vishal's latest offering Samar where he joins hands again with Thiru (whose debut was also a Vishal starrer 'Theeradhu Vilaiyattu Pillai') is the perfect example of how an interesting premise alone is not sufficient. The execution is what matters.

Plot

The movie is a thriller and hence revealing the plot is not a good idea. It is basically about a youngster who travels to meet his lady love in Bangkok and how he gets caught in a maze that will have anyone go crazy. He needs to unravel the truth and find the mastermind who controls the maze.

Cast

Vishal looks fit and energetic as always. The movie surprisingly has only a few action sequences in which he showcases his agility. Apart from that there is not much scope for performance. His restrained act however impresses at places. Sunaina’s role is almost a cameo and it is Trisha who has the meatier part. The actress is seen after a while on the Tamil screen and the role is quite crucial to the plot.  

Manoj Bhajpai and J.D.Chakravarthy who play the villains kind of torment us with their over the top antics. While they walk around wearing designer suits and sunglasses they talk and behave like insane persons. Even though their behaviour is perfectly in sync with the psychologically obsessed characters that they play, the director would have done well to extract a more restrained and kind of sophisticated performance from them.

Music and Technical aspects

One of the biggest disappointments in Samar is the low key songs and the BGM which sometimes seem irrelevant to the happenings on screen. Azhago Azhagu looks like the sole hummable song while  the others have nothing much to write home about. One of the chase sequences where Vishal tries to nab John Vijay has been captured well in the busy streets of Bangkok. The length of the film is reasonably alright. But going back and explaining the sequence of events that has already been revealed by the twist could have been avoided.

Let-downs

The one line of Samar is both interesting and quite novel for Tamil cinema. But the execution does falter big time. The exact problem with the treatment is that despite not knowing what the climax is we are not exactly on the edge of our seats. Spoiler Alert - The concept of reality show and rich people obsessed with games has not been seen so far in Tamil cinema. Those of you who have watched “The Hunger Games” and the third installment of the horror series “The Hostel” might be familiar with this. 

The director takes a while before getting to the main story with an intro song and fight that can fit easily into any other film. While he has eschewed from having the routine comedy a track and some other commercial gimmicks he should have surely done away with the item song towards the end. Logic also has taken a backseat, particularly when Vishal decides to give the villains a taste of their own medicine.

Bottom line

Samar is again proof of the importance of a watertight screenplay, particularly for a thriller. A lot of thought has been put into creating the basic idea and director Thiru can take pride in that. But the end product isn’t that captivating.

Rating -