Veteran Director P.Vasu is one of the most successful directors of South Indian cinema. He has given many blockbusters in Tamil and Kannada language films. Now another director from his family has emerged. Varu’s nephew Gautham VR has made his directorial debut with ‘7 Naatkal’ a murder mystery thriller.  The story has been written by Vimal the father of Gautham and the younger brother of Vasu. The film stars Vasu’s son Shakthi in the lead role. Let’s see how the film has come out.

Gautham Krishna (Sakthi) is a popular RJ. Pooja (Nikesha Patel) is his neighbor. They keep picking up petty quarrels always. 

We are simultaneously shown the murder of a young Balle dancer Jennifer (Angana Rai)and police suspect that Siddharth (Rajiv Pillai) the son of a very influential rich businessman Vijay Prabhakar (Prabhu) could behind this crime. Vijay Prabhakar wants to save the good name of his family and hence he deputes his foster son Sai Prasath (Ganesh Venkatraman), an officer with the Cyber Crime wing of the police department, to unofficially investigate and find out the real murderer and save his son from police action.

Sai Prasath starts is investigation and in the process, Gautham and Pooja who are innocents get framed as the suspects in the murder mystery. They have to find out why they are being chased what is the real crime and who is the culprit while they are on the run to save their life. 

How Gautham saves himself and Pooja from the trap of influential people? Who is the real murderer of Jennifer and what is the reason behind that? Watch the film in theaters to know the answers.

Debutant director Gautham VR has tried to present a murder mystery thriller packed with commercial ingredients such as comedy, action, romance and glamour. He has fairly succeeded in presenting a predominantly engaging fare with thus mixture.

The murder mystery part works out pretty well as the suspense over the identity of the murderer and the notion of the crime have been retained till the climax where everything is unveiled. The inclusion of multiple characters, each with multiple shades provides able support in this regard.

The way the two innocent are getting trapped in the murder investigation depends too much coincidences but it has been portrayed convincingly due to which the audience can root for the characters.

Lot of time taken for character establishment with the cliched voice over of the director could have been avoided. The idea of a speaking dog in order to infuse comedy, hardly serves its purpose. However the comic antics of M.S.Bhasker and Chinni Jayant as naive cops evokes some laughter here and there.

The length of the film is another issue which could have been avoided by minimizing the commercial ingredients. There are certain logical loopholes too.

Sakthi has played a guy next door and there ise nothing to demand hus acting prowess. Same goes for Nikisha who provides glamour in the songs.

Ganesh Venkatraman gets to play a character with multiple shades. Only at the end we can conclude whether he is kind ir wicked. The tall actor dies a neat job and has done justice to the character.

Prabhu's casting is a big plus to the film. With his multi-layered performance, the veteran adds energy to the proceedings.

M.S.Basker's provides comic relief and makes the right impact with his emotional performance.

e in his last scene. Nasser is convincing in a dignified role while Devadarshini as Sakthi's elder sister gives a neat account of herself.

Vishal Chandrasekar's songs fail to make any impact while bgm aptly supplements the narration. M.S.Prabhu's cinematography is adequate.

Verdict: Despite its shortcomings. '7 Naatkal' ends up as a fairly engaging as a murder mystery thriller, thanks to the suspense element retained till the and twists that work out well.