Yugi Movie Review: A tedious revenge thriller with one too many twists

Yugi Movie Review: A tedious revenge thriller with one too many twists

The exposition and the unravelling in this filmĀ feels so overwhelming that we lose interest halfway
Rating:(1.5 / 5)

All it takes for thriller films to engage the audience is a smart screenplay that's tight enough to keep the guessing game on till the end. However, some filmmakers seem to believe that the only way to make thrillers is with a never-ending barrage of twists. Debutant filmmaker Zac Harriss' Yugi is one such film. The exposition and the unravelling feel so overwhelming that we lose interest halfway.

Director: Zac Harriss
Cast: Narain, Kathir, Natty, Anandhi

Purushothaman, a senior police officer, who is now in some unnamed foreign country (thanks to a tacky green screen background), seeks the help of Nanda Kumar (Narain), a private detective, to find a missing girl. Purushothaman's trusted aide Rajkumar (Kathir), a suspended cop, also joins the investigation team as they meticulously enquire about the girl and her whereabouts. At the same time, there's another gang, headed by a ruffian named Sethu (Natty), investigating the same case. At one point, these two parallel investigations converge and startling (at least that's what they intended) revelations are made. From there it's a game of... 'twists'.

Yugi is primarily about a young couple, who get exploited by the rich and powerful. But for the most part, the focus is not on them. It meanders around aimlessly and sometimes too conveniently to reach the central plot. Packiaraj's writing lacks clarity and relies solely on the aforementioned 'twists'. But once the misleading knots are untied and the real identities of the characters are exposed, we feel cheated rather than being awestruck. Take, for instance, the scene where a character sees a colleague's family photo, and bam! we have a song featuring the couple frolicking in Pondicherry. Why is the song coming out of the imagination of a random colleague? When one of the hundred twists unfolds in the final act, this song detour doesn't just feel like a colossal waste of time but also borderline cheating.

Among the actors, Narain and Kathir deliver earnest performances. While Anandhi resorts to wailing all through the film, Athmiya is that typical subordinate who is mostly in awe of her superior male colleagues. Natty's characterisation is again a tool to trick the viewer and makes zero sense once his real identity is revealed. Despite so many characters, there is hardly any emotional connect felt with any of them.

If the writing is clumsy, the making is equally shoddy. Since it's shot simultaneously as a Tamil-Malayalam bilingual, some characters and their dialogue delivery look abysmally out of the place. The title Yugi means 'guess' in Tamil. But what's there to guess when the film doesn't succeed in having its viewer interested in knowing what's coming next.

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