Movie: Vadacurry
Director: Saravana Rajan
Cast: Jai Sampath, Swathi Reddy, Venkat Prabhu, RJ Balaji, Kasthuri and Sunny Leone
Rating: ***
Every master wants his or her pupil to succeed and I’m sure filmmaker Venkat Prabhu would’ve expected the same from his pupil Saravana Rajan, who may be a newcomer but knows how to play his cards. When most pupils try to impress their masters by doing something extraordinary, Saravana faithfully follows in his master’s footsteps. In this process, he delivers a product that mirrors Venkat Prabhu’s style of filmmaking from the get go.
He may be called a copycat but that doesn’t change the fact that he lives up to the repertoire of his master and that’s a good sign for a newcomer in a competitive industry. Like his master, Saravana weaves an engaging film with the most unexpected villain, a hero who gets embroiled in a helpless situation, a love track that’s cute but doesn’t run parallely with the main story, an item number and corrupt cops.
Saravana earns brownie points exactly in the same places where his master does in his films, especially when he uses humor to his strength and entertains at regular intervals. But he also makes the same mistakes a la his master by not giving the heroine a substantial role and merely using her to extract clichéd performance. Nevertheless, his end product is not exceptional but is short and satisfying
The story revolves around the abuse of the mobile phone and it focuses on the life of our protagonist, who claims ownership of an unattended phone because he feels inferior of his own low-end phone. The result of which is ugly and it puts his life at risk.
“Vadacurry” has a promising story, one that connects with you instantly, but it needed powerful performances to be an edge-of-the-seat-thriller, which surely was missing. It’s probably because of the choice of the actors. Likewise, there was an element of suspense revolving around the villain’s character throughout the film and when it’s finally broken towards the end; you don’t feel chills going up your spine. Despite these shortcomings, Saravana keeps us hooked with his story that dishes out all the necessary elements of a commercial entertainer. He has a hero, a common man, who fights an organized racket where expired medicines are resold in the market, an item number featuring Sunny Leone and RJ Balaji as the hero’s sidekick leaves the audiences in splits with his tongue-in-cheek humor and one-liners.
It was refreshing to see Jai in a role quite contrary to the ones he has played so far in his career. He only shines in roles that are most suitable to him and this one in “Vadacurry” was apt. Saravana never tries to portray Jai as a typical Tamil film hero, but keeps him grounded mostly and that works in the favour of the film.
Praveen edits the film sharply, keeps it short at 122 minutes while debutant composers Vivek-Merwin produce couple of melodious numbers in an otherwise mediocre album. Saravana’s intention to produce an entertainer with the combination of suspense and fun seems to have paid off.