Maareesan Review

Ashwin Ram

Fahadh Faasil is a thief who has just gotten bailed out of jail. He decides to rob a house which happens to be Vadivelu’s who suffers from Alzheimer's. They eventually travel together for their own reasons which form the crux of the story.

Writing/ Direction: 

A slow burner on the lines of Malayalam movies as the pacing is unhurried, yet on looking back the flow makes a lot of sense. With just three big scenes, the film is carried by those small moments that construct the structure of the situations and characters. The initial half is engaging to an extent by raising a lot of questions, the brisk twist in the interval block settles for all. Despite the screenplay being not-so-great in the first hour, the philosophical dialogues do make a mark, and obviously the acceptable reasoning for the leads to stick together keeps it going. The revenge aspect post midway gets into this familiar space, in spite of presenting a valuable backstory to it. The variety is definitely there in the storytelling style, somehow the impact did not result as hard as it was probably intended. The second half became a little dull and repetitive until the point where Fahadh Faasil joins the party. The spying scene is terrific and so intense, the climax works well too by forming an admirable relationship between the lead characters. Solid writing in this particular part as selfishness and selflessness combine to accomplish something noble. However the drama is overdone and becomes cinematic to not create any powerful scenes about the taken topic. There are also some logic issues which could have been repaired during the execution stage.

Performances:

Almost the entire film is shouldered by the performances of Vadivelu and Fahadh Faasil, full marks in that case. Great to see them both compete and contribute to the flow, while Vadivelu does it with emotions and Fahadh Faasil takes care of the quirks. Their natural presence, body language and dialogue delivery elevate every single scene. Just that the supporting actors had some level of scope to add any value to the subject.

Technicalities: 

No big efforts with respect to songs, laziness is evident especially for making a remix of an Ilayaraja track. Thankfully the background score is pleasing and helps the versatile jumps of the screenplay. Neat camera work, nothing matches filming in live locations and this film proves it right, tight closeups and the wide travel shots are captured so well. Editing could have been much better by making the output crisper, both the halves have potential parts to be trimmed.

Bottomline

A great idea presented pretty well. With a sharper runtime and stronger screenplay, it could have been much more. The emotional package is underwhelming, while the characterizations and performances end up being bangers.

MAAREESAN - Definitely Watchable for its Interesting Lead Characters!

Rating - 2.75/ 5