Shhhhh….

For me that’s the short form of “Satham Podadhey“… 🙂 This latest flick from director Vasanth definitely is a silent hit amongst the recent releases. An off beat movie from the regular mass hero subjects, this one is a thriller. You don’t feel the thrill in the first half of the movie. It starts with an alcoholic marrying a girl and shows no interest in sexual life. The girl and the family think it is just a typical arranged marriage problem that could be solved without taking any extreme steps. But as time passes, they come to know that the guy is actually impotent because of excess alcohol intake. They also come to know about the arrogance inside the guy when he beats the girl and starts torturing her. All these leads to a divorce and the girl separates from the guy. Probably now you would be wondering sitting in the theatre if it is going to be another sentimental Tamil movie.

The girl shifts to her brother’s place for a change and there enters Prithiviraj, the smart software professional with lots of sense of humor (isn’t it contradictory :D) and who displays a character. These two start going around and they marry. They both land in Kochi for Prithivi’s one week assignment and in a strange encounter Prithivi meets the girl’s ex-husband. The ex-husband kidnaps the girl, keeps her in a sound proof room and plans such that others believe the girl died in a gas leakage incident in her house. While Prithivi and others believe that the girl actually died in the accident, this guy tortures her in that sound proof room. Did Prithivi rescue the girl? What happened to this psychopathic guy? is the rest of the story.

The film has limited number of characters and every one plays their role well. Prithivi excels in that smart character role with his sense of humor. The soft spoken guy would definitely be liked by girls. Padmapriya and the psycho (Chennai-28 guy) do their job really well. But I liked three more people in the movie. They are Vasanth, Yuvan and the camera person. Vasanth has taken a difficult subject which could have been a disaster even with couple of wrongly chosen dialogues and scenes. But he gave a thriller with message out of this subject. Giving a thriller out of this subject would definitely be a difficult task and he has done it really well. The screenplay is damn good and he keeps the audience to the seat, especially in the second half.

Music definitely should be good for a thriller and Yuvan does it neat. I am sure he has improved a lot over the years and the climax of this movie speaks for it. There is no dialogue for the last 15 minutes or so and it is just the visuals and BGM that keeps the audience tight. The songs are good on its own but I would blame Vasanth for placing it at the wrong points in the movie. Though they are good numbers, especially “Azhagu Kutti Chellam“, “Oh Indha Kaathal” and “Paesugiraen“, they irritate you when they appear all of a sudden without any relevance. I was wondering how great it would have been if it was a 2 hours thriller without any song sequences. It could have been a good attempt and probably could take Tamil cinema to next levels.

The camera person did a pretty good job with the lenses. The lush green scenes in “Oh Indha Kaathal“, some 100 odd smiles of kids in “Azhagu Kutty“, the long bridge, old buildings of Kochi instead of traditional Kochi port definitely needs a mention. In one scene where the psycho tortures the heroine, the camera just stays in the hall at one position. There would be no frame where the psycho beats the heroine. But there would be shadows of heroine going around the house, plates and cups getting scattered. A different try where the audience would feel the gravity of the situation without actually seeing it.

Overall a different Tamil cinema, a thriller showing bad effects of alcohol and neatly packaged. It definitely shows the kind of experience and maturity Vasanth has got over the years.