Thirumalai -(Vijay)

Yet another poor-boy rich-girl romance with parental opposition and mafia interference. Vijay plays Thirumalai who runs a two-wheeler mechanic shop. He has this chance encounter with Shweta on New Year's Day, and she wishes him success in all his future endeavours. Thirumalai, finding positive things happening in his life, attributes it to her wishes and falls for her.


He relentlessly woos her and she finally reciprocates. Her furious father - who owns half-a-dozen TV channels or so - hires the services of Arasu, the local don, with whom he was having a running feud, to put Thirumalai in his place.


The main flaw is in the scripting where the debutant director tries to depict a love story on the one side, and the politician-cop-media-underworld nexus on the other. While the hero gets involved with the first, he's not bothered about the second, till his love life is threatened.


The script is not focussed. The thrilling opening scene of a videographer taking compromising shots of a murder, running for his life and is fortuitously saved by the hero; followed by the repetition of a similar scene later is a wasted effort. For, the director makes no use of it to develop the plot. Scenes like Shweta's father's sudden volte face when he approaches Arasu, with whom he was at loggerheads, to thwart the romance is not convincing either.


Again, scenes like Thirumalai walking into a meditation hall to express his love for Shweta, and then making a mockery of the spiritual guru, the people and the place, is in bad taste, considering that the guru was depicted as a saintly, sober figure.


Recent films of Vijay had the hero indulging in violence for most part of the film, and suddenly espousing the cause of non-violence in the closing scene! Puthiya Geethai had Vijay giving a long sermon to hardened criminal Thilakan that makes him give up violence, one suspects, in sheer exhaustion on hearing the hero's long monologue. Here too, the hero's long lecture on humanity and non-violence makes the cold-blooded killer Arasu throw away his arms, probably out of sheer frustration of having to hear the hero's long lecture! Arasu pays for it when his henchmen, and partner, not quite convinced by the hero's lecture, try to lynch Arasu!


Manoj K. Jayan as Arasu makes the most of his role, except in the scene where he plays the reformed man. Kausalya and Raghuvaran as Vijay's neighbours bring some sobriety to the proceedings. Vivek's comedy is a total waste and so is the sizzling 'item' number by Kiran.


There's nothing fresh here that we haven't seen in an earlier Vijay film. The Vijay-Jyotika pair, after their successful combination in Khushi, was expected to re-create the same magic on screen. But it doesn't happen.

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