Wednesday 1 June 2011

Thoonganagaram

2011 by Gaurav

A lots of debutant directors are coming up in Tamil language, most of them really young. It is good that a considerable percentage among them do make a mark. This is a very interesting factor that is doing wonders for Tamil cinema in the new millennium. It is even more appreciable that they make movies with a real Tamil flavour, with stories and characters which are routed in Tamil culture, may it be urban or rustic. However, a good percentage of these stories are based on rustic characters is the biggest credit to Tamil movie makers. At least in one state in India, there are artists who haven't forgotton the fact that, India lives in its villages and a good majority are still suffering.

Four callous youth are all struggling for their livelihoods in the sleepless city of Madurai. When they come across a situation when some body takes shoots videos of girls in a trail room (in a textile show room) black mailing her, one of them goes out and bashes out these bad guys. It turned out that one of them was the son of a prominent local bad guy, who is now wanting revenge. This guy makes this strange plan, by which three of the friends have to save their families by killing their friend, who was responsible for the bashing. 

In some aspects, Thoonganagaram is even better than Subramaniapuram, the predecessor in the Madurai youth based movies. Yes its brilliant in patches. But it turns out quite ordinary at some places and those places really takes the charm out of this movie making it just an average entertainer, which could have been an excellent movie. It is certain scenes in the script, unnecessarily detailing certain incidents and elaborating few cliches, which fails this could have been brilliant movie.

But the debutant director has been excellent, who also plays a part as one of the friends. May be it is this double duty which made him ignore the details. But still credit to him, because if this movie was made in Malayalam, I am sure the Malayaali viewers might have appreciated it even more as there are not even good average movies coming up in Malayalam. All the more, there have been a lot of Madurai youth based movies now in Tamil, most are still different in some ways, though.

Once again, the Cinematography is brilliant.