Sattendru Maarudhu Vaanilai Review: I feel bad when movies have semi-elegant ideas and fail to generate the slightest discussion from viewers. While Karuppu was released with a bang last weekend, Sattendru Maarudhu Vaanilai was released quietly and, judging by the buzz around me, many were not even aware of the film’s release into theatres. Upon viewing it, it was easy to see why. It’s not a bad movie per se, since there are some terrific ideas in the script that might have been developed into a great romantic thriller. Sadly, the movie is not quite cinema ready in terms of making those ideas come to life.
It starts at a resort located at a hill station where a wedding is being held. Jai stars as the husband of Meenakshi Govindharajan, who plays his wife, who is staying there. One of her friends calls for her, and Jai flippantly tells her that she’s not in the room. But all of her stuff is still inside! Of course, he’s always the suspect. The police arrest Jai and start to investigate what could have happened to his missing wife.
Then it goes into flashback and makes it the setting of Jai being an orphaned IT programmer who falls in love with Meenakshi the moment he sees her. She is the daughter of a minister whose eyes are on her more like an asset than his own. He even plans to marry her off as someone’s second wife. At the same time, the main antagonist, Garuda Ram, a businessman with a chain of resorts all over India, is introduced, who secretly records intimate videos of couples and sells them online for crores of rupees. The film then attempts to connect all these seemingly unrelated threads into one large conspiracy thriller.
I think personally, when it’s presented on paper, it’s completely understandable why director Babu Vijay would have been excited about this script. Everything is in place to make this a fun mainstream thriller. This is surveillance, digital exploitation and manipulation, emotional trauma, cybercrime, stolen laptops, and a protagonist whose behavior changes over time, hinting at deeper motives. Parts even smell like an old-school commercial thriller with a contemporary flavor of technophobia. The idea of having the backstory of a crime empire based on hidden cameras really is a wonderful concept. It’s dense enough for a dark and tense thriller.
But the film never manages to hold it together at any point when it comes to execution. All significant developments seem overly choreographed. I could always feel like the script was forcing characters to do something because it had to. In a thriller, coincidences aren’t off the wall, but they must feel natural. Here, things come at you so mechanised, it’s hard to believe what you see. The script does not raise its stakes organically, but rather is continually loaded by being artificially trying to create a situation, only to attempt to fill in the loopholes with a quick explanation.
The conversations add to the less serious nature of the story. The film is somewhat funny when characters pop up with lines such as “We are going to upload this on the dark web using cryptographic software” or “organic life.” These are not threatening or smart, but rather hyperbole of what technology is portrayed in old-fashioned thrillers. A foreign businessman even arrives to negotiate with the bad guy, but his Tamil language has such a weird theatrical accent that it takes any immersion right out of the scenes. Then of course there is the fact that he wears the same costume in both scenes, adding to the unintentional humor.
A major problem is that there is complete lack of tonal consistency. The film attempts to get emotional, romantic, criminal and funny, but the cut between scenes is erratic and choppy. Immediately after the heroine’s mother passes away, the plot takes a sudden turn for the sordidities of pub-song with celebratory dancing. I couldn’t fathom the emotional reasoning behind that choice. The songs in the pub don’t add anything substantial to the story. “Sattendru Maarudhu Vaanilai” is on the other hand melodious and pleasant to hear, and it is the title track. The overall background music is decent by Girishh Gopalakrishnan, but it isn’t the type of music that makes a thriller like this go up a notch.
I was also surprised to see that it was handled by Richard M. Nathan. The film, in terms of visuals, is a bit lacking in ambiance in a romantic thriller set in resorts and hill stations. Usually, the frames are not suspenseful or emotionally close. All the photos look very flat. All the photos appear strange, flatness.
Acting-wise, Jai surprisingly looks like Vijay instead of his character at times, but he does give his performance a tinge of energy. In some expressions/parts of dialogue the influence can no longer be ignored. The film itself embraces that fan service approach to a degree: there are mentions and moments of punchy dialogue. Believe it or not, some of the scenes even managed to go on screen within the theatre. The humorous moments of Yogi Babu made me laugh, particularly the “Sudden Thalapathy has arrived” lines and the one about people putting wristbands and going to Panaiyur to call him to enter politics. Those moments were landed due to their acceptance of the absurd rather than their accidental discovery.
Meenakshi Govindharajan is playing her normal role, and isn’t doing anything particularly nuanced. The supporting cast is roundly diverse with actors such as Sathyan, Sriman, Adithya Kathir etc. while Garuda Ram is back with a loud villain archetype. The film also throws in some potentially interesting character arcs – one of which is a character who’s written against convention – but the script changes that character’s behaviour as needed. One of the casualties of the film is consistency.
The climax is a good summary of my frustration with the movie. The hero’s grand scheme seems original – but as he constructs a whole narrative around the idea of hidden surveillance tech, the film forgets about the cameras entirely when they’re not needed. But in the same duration, CCTV footage suddenly comes back into play. Such inconsistencies undermine the verisimilitude of the narration’s account over and over again.
What was most disappointing in the film is that it is clearly an ambitious film. Babu Vijay was definitely looking to create a ‘socially conscious thriller’ around privacy invasion and the misuse of technology and it all came across through the entire movie. However, willful attempts can’t make up for an amateur set, unwritten material, and tonal inconsistencies. Each time the film starts to get interesting, it devolve into mediocrity.
The film may not be a cohesive whole in the end but it is definitely a collection of good ideas. There are some moments of genius in the film, but it’s not able to maintain the discipline required to make them into an interesting movie.
Rating: 2.5/5
