Jail Movie - Exhausting Experience

Ashwin Ram

Vasanthabalan gets back to his safe zone, a film that’s in the underdog drama genre. GV Prakash who composed music for the filmmaker’s first film ‘Veyyil’ is acting as the male lead in his direction. Also starring Radhika, Ravi Maria, etc. Let’s see whether the proven talented director has hit a goal in the review that follows.

Premise

Revolves around three friends living in a Colony area… a thief, a drug smuggler and an innocent who works honestly in a petrol bunk. After a series of incidents, a gang war happens in which the smuggler gets killed. Revenge stands front in the eyes of the other two, what happens after this in their lives forms the remaining story.

Writing/ Direction

The central theme is noble and appreciable, forcefully migrating the people living in slum areas and arresting them in a colony that is far away from their work spaces. But the film is extremely unfaithful to the above said crucial topic it has touched for namesake. The whole situation is exposed during the title card just as voice-over dialogues by the director. Not just that, he continues to introduce various characters living around in the area one by one and explains to us their back stories, again just by words that too in a very old-fashioned manner and visually they are just moving from the left and right of the screen doing nothing. In the meantime, this treatment makes it a restless watch giving a feel of a docu-drama, already. Until the pre-interval chase sequence, that comes out of nowhere, there’s no clarity on where the movie is leading towards. There are plenty of characters just physically occupying the screen-space, the scenes are also very random and pointless. Writing is unfortunately poor at most parts, incidents keep on happening without any coherence or continuity just to feed the audience the struggles faced by the characters in the film, but the emotional impact stays beneath the ground level. Convenient writing is one thing, but here the base story it tries to convey and the screenplay that’s presented have no links. How can they expect empathy from the viewers on depicting the lives of two rogues. And just to show that innocent poor people are affected due to circumstances (in the second half), a character is purposefully shown pity right from the very first frame. The added details to certain characters doesn’t help the film to its strength, take the single dimensional negative-shade cop for instance, he has been given a gastric trouble angle and literally every scene of his, he comes out uncomfortable from the restroom, Why?, just to forcefully create an unpleasant euphoria while he is present, because he is the villain. This is actually the real cry baby film. The main conflict that opens in the halfway mark is ditto same as the one in Pa.Ranjith’s ‘Madras’, even after landing at the point where the story proceeds to the next level, the audience are continued to be taken for granted in the latter too. There’s zero focus, it follows a path for sometime then switches to a totally different one, Repeat. It goes on like a serial, introducing new plot-points for every few minutes, in the name of forming interest, all it results in is a complete disappointment. The climax is again, very much out-of-the-place without proper reasoning, and targets to kill an important character and leave a strong mark but all that it leaves us is a state of confusion. The lazy writing is all over the film, take the popular ‘Kaathoda Kaathanen’ song for example, how hard is it to design a few beautiful love montages? The director decides to take intimacy as a tool to boost the romance factor, okay that’s fine but there is a limit to which it can be exploited, making the hero and the heroine kiss each other for the whole song without even attempting to offer anything fresh is unacceptable. Intimacy is a value addition for a film like ‘Bachelor’ where the central theme revolves around its consequence, but it is absolutely useless in this particular flick, the heroine character itself is needless to the core subject is a completely different matter though.

Cast

Casting choices are nicely done. Almost all not-so-famous artists suit well for their roles, and their looks give a realistic feel. GV Prakash’s dialogue delivery gives life to the character he has played. Youngsters who have acted as his friends are natural on-screen. Radhika fits in the shoes well. Also the heroine Abarnathi shines, some of the initial loud romantic sequences between her and GVP are quite enjoyable. Ravi Maria looked apt during the early scenes of the movie, but he went overboard towards the end, nevertheless a break for him after doing comedy roles for a very long time.

Technicalities

GV Prakash’s album is a mixed bag in which the soulful melody number ‘Kaathoda Kaathanen’ sung by Dhanush and Aditi Rao Hydari is an exception, just to listen as audio though. The remaining Gana tracks aren’t instantly catchy or impressive. Background music has no big scope, a composer with an immense potential who is choosy these days is sadly given an underwhelming flick to score. Camera work is quite striking, the geography of the Colony area is clearly established, the ‘TVs falling from the terrace’ sequence is intensely captured and the way the cinematographer captures the crowd is also good. But the way the night party shots are presented in the second half is messy. Editing is not just in the editor’s hands completely, but still the work is nowhere attractive in the movie. The entire first half was like seeing 20-30 separate scenes in a random order, shuffling and placing them at a different spot wouldn’t have made any disturbance to the flow. Also there are quite a few overly long scenes towards the end which could have been shorter and crispy. Stunt choreography is weak, the pre-interval gang war chase sequence had all the scope of providing an intriguing stretch, but an opportunity is missed and messed up.

Verdict

Vasanthabalan arrests the audience in all the possible wrong ways with uninspiring storyline, old-school approach, preachy narrative and a boring screenplay. Sad truth is that it is by far the beloved filmmaker’s worst outing in every aspect.

JAIL - Exhausting Experience!

Rating -1.75/ 5.