Performances

The entire cast is filled with unknown faces, but each of them play their characters so realistically that it is almost difficult to judge whether they are all new-comers!
 

Sri as Velu looks confident and performs really good that he earns all your sympathies right from the beginning! Urmila Mahanta is excellent in a role, that has to display subtle emotions and she does it well!
The role of a spoilt brat fits Mithun like a glove and the newcomer pulls of his villainous role convincingly!
Manisha Yadav is terrific as the school girl who is caught in the hands of a rogue, but is unable to escape! She displays the correct emotions in the right proportion and makes an impression! If there is one character who easily overshadows all these four is Muthuraman as the cunning Inspector, he   performs so naturally and it is difficult to judge his character as the film moves on!

Technicalities

R. Prasanna's background score is really good and manages to raise the tempo of the film. There are only 2 songs in the film which are without any instruments in which Oru Kural sung by Karthik stands out! Vijay Milton's camera work deserves praise as it is the first time a Tamil film has been shot with a digital camera. The streets of Chennai has been captured excellently but the scene where it really stands out is the scene when Manisha steals the memory card from Mithun's phone. Gopi Krishna's editing is crisp with the film having a running time of less than two hours!

Final Verdict

Balaji Sakthivel has taken a very serious subject that you see everyday and has woven into a beautiful film that makes you smile in one scene, shocks you in the next and so on.. The film leaves you no time to even think and moves at a jet speed and finishes before you even think the climax is here! Terrific performances, breathtaking cinematography, tight screenplay, dialogues with a stark of realism all shows the painstaking effort put in by Balaji to create a film that is sure to leave you speechless as well as sleepless. Even though, Vazhakku Enn 18/9 falls just a bit short of the impact Kaadhal made, it is still a gritty, realistic drama that will hit you hard and make Tamil Cinema proud, yet again! Without a doubt, this is definitely the Best Tamil Film of the year. So, what are you waiting for? Book your tickets for this classic!

RATING: 4/5