Selfie Review - Decent Watch!

Ashwin Ram 

Selfie is a thriller genre flick directed by debut filmmaker Mathi Maaran. The film stars GV Prakash and Gautam Vasudev Menon in the lead roles. Veteran Kalaipuli S Thanu has bankrolled the movie under his V Creations production banner.

Premise:

GV Prakash’s father forcefully joins him in Engineering, while he wishes to do business. Being the student of a college, he jumps into finding innocent people and getting them college admission on commission basis. One day, during the course of a deal, he comes as a troublemaker to Gautam Menon who runs a brokerage firm and thus their enmity begins.

Writing/ Direction:

An unexplored one-line instantly gives an excitement, in that case the first impression of the film is good. Because of brokerage being the base, different plot points fall into place. The film uses the naturally built unique ideas well in the first half, blending them tastefully with some relatable sentiments. The flow of the first half is racy, there are no big dull moments that disturb the narrative. Also, a good amount of research has been done, with respect to the refreshing core subject, which is highly appreciable. The research work gathered isn't placed for namesake, the points are developed and fittingly brought to screen as interesting moments throughout the first half. The approach is realistic and enjoyable in the same way, which offers plenty of lively sequences. The engaging first hour develops the conflict convincingly and promises to give a similar later half by leaving the midway mark with curiosity. But the second half is just middling with hardly any enjoyable mind games between the hero and the villain. The try is there, but the screenplay feels repetitive and in fact so random at places in the final hour. The pace is rapid and rushed for no reason, so things get delivered in a half-baked manner. It even feels that the scenes are moving in flashes that we get to see only the key moments and cut to the next major point, this happens continuously post interval and there’s zero stay for the audience to consume the happenings comfortably. The climax is no exception, an important message is ‘con…’, and there is no ‘…veyed’, yes it seemed like the film was cut abruptly. We finally get an idea of why the film is named Selfie and that’s it, the closure lacks clarity, it was like the filmmaker didn’t respect his own story by deciding to leave an open ending to almost all the characters involved and just put a message card that too with blacked-out words cut by the censor board.

Performances:

Just like the recent GV Prakash Kumar’s outing Bachelor, he fits well here and he is in fine form. He has always played the next-door boy role with colloquial slang with ease, and he proves it again here. Gautam Vasudev Menon offers nothing great to the template villain role he has played, the character initially had good scope, but unfortunately doesn’t have a steady follow up to make it a powerful one. Hence, the cat and mouse game gets stuck to the ground level till the very end. Varsha Bollamma just fills the female space and has no big link to the main subject. The fresh faces have done really well, and they shine alongside the hero with most of them having a natural presence, helping the lively treatment.

Technicalities:

GV Prakash’s music is convincing with apt and stylish songs for the flick. Background score elevates the slow motion shots with trippy tunes for both the hero and the villain. The gaps are left for a purpose, for the visuals to be highlighted. No big complaints with respect to camera work, the shots within a small room space are captured neatly, not much experimentation though. Editing here is the hit and also the miss of this movie. Two hours of crisp runtime and a racy flow is an advantage, but there are a lot of abruptly cut crucial places where the situation is registered only to the half of its actual potential. Not sure whether these messed up decisions were made while filming or at the editing table.

Bottomline:

Racy first half with a rare plot presented in a gripping manner promised to offer a lot, but a rushed flow in the final hour with hardly any worthy sequences felt like viewing powerpoint slides with just key points coming one after the other.

Selfie - Decent Watch!

Rating - 2.75/ 5.