The talented Bharath is badly in need of a hit and his joining hands with 'Kirumi' Kathir for an interesting combo should have worked to an advantage at the box office. But alas writer-director Arun Krishnaswamy after choosing a fairly good idea for a plot has hampered it with a wayward screenplay.
The film opens creating some expectations as we meet Bharath, who works for a construction company and is in heavy debts as he is a horse punter who loses because of fixing by the big guns. He meets Chandini Tamilarasan and it is love at first sight. On the other hand Kathir lands in Chennai and goes to stay at a house recommended by a friend where, to his surprise he finds that it’s a girl Sanchitha Shetty. Later in the story we learn that Sanchitha needs forty five lakhs to retrieve her house from a bank loan. Bharath plans a getaway with fifty lakhs of bribe money that horse owner Radha Ravi pays to another owner Yog Jaypee to fix a race. The money lands in Kathir's car and this leads to a collision of all the characters and what happens next is the rest of the screenplay. It is sad to see Bharath struggling with a non existent script mouthing inane and clichéd dialogues to Chandini, his friends and just about everyone. We hope he gets his big break when the Mahesh Babu-ARM film arrives. Kathir is spoken about as a very promising hero, but there is nothing to showcase his talents here and in his case too we probably have to wait for 'Sigai' or 'Vikram Veda'. Both the heroines Chandini and Sanchitha have handled their clichéd roles with some grace. Radha Ravi, Yog Jaypee and the rest of the cast walk in and out of frames without creating any sort of impact.
The saving grace of 'Ennodu Vilayadu' is the neat camera work by Yuva while the rest of the technical work is passable. Moses and Sudarshan M Kumar are credited with the songs and bgm which are not bad. Director Arun Krishnaswamy has tried horse races as the core subject, but when we come out of the theaters, we are as clueless about the little known sport as we were before. We sit up expecting some novelty when Kathir and Sanchitha are shown as roommates, but the treatment of their relationship is very ordinary. A film in this genre can escape if it is fast paced or thrilling, but this one is neither.
Verdict: A game that we won't miss playing.
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