Chasing Movie Review: An awful, loud cop film with not a shred of logic

You know something is wrong with a cop film when you see an undercover cop, disguised as a charity worker, introducing herself as Silk Smitha to a serial rapist. Bizarre moments like these ensure that, out of the dozens of characters Varalaxmi's Aadhira encounters, the first to die a gruesome death is, in fact, logic.

Cast: Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Bala Saravanan, Super Subbarayan, Yamuna

Director: Veera Kumar

Chasing is Veera Kumar's debut film and he apparently wanted to register the title of his film so firmly on the minds of viewers that the BGM literally screams the word into our eardrums, almost successfully chasing us out of the screens. Veera seems to have wanted to make a John Wick-esque action film that steps things up right from the word go. But, sadly, only Varalaxmi's running is fast-paced here, not the screenplay. The much-hyped stunt sequences fall flat on the face just like the film's goons and all the hard work of the actor goes for a toss, because of the haphazard choreography. The gawkish animated backgrounds during the fight scenes, end up looking like hilarious rip-offs of vintage video games. At one point, when Aadhira sends a fighter flying in the air with a Mortal Kombat kick, I had to restrain myself from shouting "Finish him!"

The story isn't entirely about Varalaxmi's Aaadhira, it equally belongs to her four students from the police training college. These future cops play a version of the statue game in their head whenever they are in distress and wait calmly for Varalaxmi to save them. Alas, even when the gender of the hero is different, the stereotype still remains. Seeing the women in khaki call each other "Poriurundai" and "Ganja vikravale" under the guise of comedy only makes things worse. These bird-brained assistants, who could give a tough fight to Paramartha Guru's disciples, serve more as obstacles to Aadhira's mission rather than being helpful.

This mission is to take down a bunch of evil men who sell drugs and sexually harass women. Though this sounds ambitious enough on paper, Veera fails pathetically in execution. He even packs this 'empowerment' film with sleazy item numbers.

The filmmaker adopts a non-linear narrative and starts his story from the end. Ideally, in such cases, the audience will have a bunch of hows, but here, the absence of logic bombards us with whys instead. For starters, Aadhira uses a case as a coverup for her personal revenge. But we don't know why she executes her plans amateurishly, leaving behind tons of evidence. Oh, and she manages to walk away clean too.

In the last shot of the film, we see Aadhira running behind a bunch of criminals, hinting at a sequel. I couldn't help but wish that a talent like Varalaxmi would instead simply run away from such awful scripts.