Vengayam Movie Online – Review

Story: A sub-inspector (Alexander) falls in love with a chirpy villager ( Pavina). Meanwhile, fake godmen go missing within the village and he's asked to resolve the case. What does a gaggle of kids need to do with this mystery?Movie Review: Vigilante films are a dime a dozen in Tamil cinema and frequently touch a chord with the audiences as they make for the easiest fantasies. In fact, director Shankar, the most important showman within the industry today, built his career around this genre.

Director Cheran has re-released Vengayam, a small film which was released in 2011 but got drowned amid a slew of biggies. The film just about follows the formula of vigilante films but brings a few new things to the table – for one, the protagonists are hardly ones you can expect in this sort of film.

That said the dilemma one is bound to stand after watching Vengayam is whether or not to recommend it to anyone. At the one hand, the film’s subject creates scope for erudite discussion and it has an emotional impact when it ends. But at the other, it isn’t plotted well, the acting leaves much to be desired and the production values are definitely below par and at best resemble a student film. The worst is the editing that is totally clumsy. Surely, the team of debutants worked on a shoe-string budget and want to be praised for arising with something they honestly believe in. On the same time, given the sub-par production values, as an audience member meting out hard-earned money for the ticket, does one wish to experience it within the theatre?

You keep wondering inside the film what a greater filmmaker, someone attuned to the rhythms of business cinema, would have done with this material. Director Rajkumar gets the fundamentals right – a topic that demands attention, a mystery that should be solved, interesting characters that this sort of subject requires (protagonists whose plight the audience can empathize with, antagonists who belong to the scum of the earth, and a cop investigating the mystery). However it is within the manner wherein he goes about generating the film’s knots and unraveling them that leaves you unimpressed. He doesn’t appear to know when to stop, and also you finally end up with sequences that extend for an unlimited period of time. Even actor Sathyaraj’s cameo is awkwardly handled and feels unnecessary.

The one time Rajkumar gets it almost right is within the segment involving a boy who's tricked into human sacrifice by a godman. And the only wherein he goes horribly wrong is the romantic track between the cop and the lady. As untrained actors appear to have been used, the performances are never convincing and infrequently result in unintended humour.

The film is full of expletives and has a slightly amusing scene where two women hurl the choicest of abuses at one another. While most abuses are beeped out, there are a few instances where they aren’t – especially within the climax when an expletive is uttered by a youngster. While it goes perfectly well with the context of the scene or even adds to its impact, you can’t help but wonder how the filmmakers managed to bag an ‘U’ certificate. There's a pretty good film somewhere throughout the script of Vengayam, but what you get to look on screen isn’t that for certain.