Madraskaaran Movie Review: All skirmish, no substance

Director Vaali Mohan Das' Madraskaaran, in its teaser and trailer, showed flashes of a 2000s mass action entertainer, where a hero returns to his native, messes with the local don and prevails in a cat-and-mouse game. The film, starring Shane Nigam and Kalaiyarasan, had the ability to join the league of such action entertainers. However, the makers do not bring anything fresh to the narrative.

Madraskaaran begins with the wedding arrangements of Sathyamoorthy or Sathya (Shane Nigam) and Meera (Niharika Konidela) in Pudukottai. Sathya wants his big day to be held at his native, where his family fell into misfortune and fled to Chennai, having found greener pastures. As fate would have it, he crosses paths with don Durai Singam (Kalaiyarasan). Their encounter goes on to have a negative effect on the dream life Sathya has planned for.

The story is plagued with twin obstructions of logic and a confused series of events. Logic here is the precept by which events are linked within the limits of the film. For example, since the screenplay is worked around two men going at each other owing to their bruised egos, Sathya and Singam's characters needed to be hellraisers with a quirk to them rather than the ordinary people they are. Shockingly, such writing is absent here. Emotional connection too doesn't make the best argument for the film. There are just passing references to how much Sathya's family was insulted in his native during his childhood. The all-tell-no-show writing undercuts our attention by leaving spaces of vital information about the family blank, including the names of Sathya's parents!

The situations that pit Sathya and Singam against each other scream intolerable levels of artificiality. The idea is to bring the protagonist and antagonist outside, make them meet, of course not in a pleasant atmosphere, and turn them into enemies before one of them dies. Making the family go on wedding shopping a day before the wedding is already a convenient idea. Writing an inciting incident where the villain maintains restraint and the hero displays boisterousness, Vaali Mohan Das prevents us from rooting for Sathya and on the contrary, we really don't care what happens to him as he was the one who asked for it.

Director: Vaali Mohan Das

Cast: Shane Nigam, Kalaiyarasan, Niharika Konidela, Aishwarya Dutta

Beyond the schmaltzy phone calls between Sathya and Meera, we don't get enough information about their love and how much they want each other. Their portions, too, are as basic as it gets. While they look good together on screen, especially when they break into 'Thai Thakka Kalyanam' and 'Kadhal Sadugudu,' there are no emotional stakes here either. We don't quite get what is going on inside Meera's head when she realises her beau's life has changed upside down just hours before their big day. We see her shedding a drop or two, and that's it; we don't get to see or hear about her anymore. Though it is anybody's guess what is going to happen next after she says, "Naa unakkaga life full-a wait pannuven," the already unexplained importance of Sathya to Meera further weakens with her disappearing from the scene without a trace. Given that she has fought and is still fighting her father, who is not yet convinced Sathya is an able suitor even a day before the wedding, it is necessary we know why she can't live without him and vice versa. These spaces too are a huge disappointment.

The two-hour film felt longer than necessary, with several subplots branching out of the Sathya-Singam conflict. Adding to the runtime, red herrings should be used only when the real reveal has something substantial to offer. Madraskaaran employs twists just for the sake of it, with those changes leading us nowhere. Again, it is a good idea to introduce more villains in what seems like a straightforward one-on-one clash. The film moves from Singam and Sathya to Singam's wife Kalyani (Aishwarya Dutta) and his brother-in-law Manimaran (Charan) and then to Muthu Pandi (Super Subbarayan). Certain segments that employ the Rashomon effect feel comparatively better. But strangely, in Madraskaaran, some ideas don't take off and others are given wings only to be clipped midway to bring in another idea, and this cycle continues till the end. 

It is disheartening to not find a single impressive character or an overriding emotional core in a film like Madraskaaran, where the bare minimum expectation is to appeal to our senses, if not intelligence. Lines are placed in the film to establish the title, such as "Madraskaaran nenachavala kattikka poraan" and "Andha Madraskaaran-ah thookanum." These dialogues are a telltale of the empty hype and that the film had potential to be many things, like a good love story, an engaging action story and a moving family drama, or at least any of it if not all. Unfortunately, it ends up not being anything.