Director Suseenthiran known for meaningful cinema like ‘Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu’, ‘Aathalaal Kadhal Seiveer’ and ‘Jiiva’ in recent times also met huge success with the more commercial ‘Pandiya Naadu’. The director has once again joined with Vishal to give an out and out commercial film ‘Paayum Puli’ and does he match his previous body of work remains to be seen.

The film opens in, where else but Madurai where a gang extorts money from businessmen and murder those who refuse to pay. The gang murders a sub inspector who kills one of them during a police raid. Enter ACP Jayaseelan (Vishal) who comes to the city ten days before taking charge and his friend Soori a constable gives him company. It is love at first sight for Jayaseelan when he meets Sowmya (Kajal Agarwal) and he goes after her every time he sees her. Jayaseelan gets in touch with all the dons, rowdies and ruffians under the guise of demanding a share of their loot and he starts killing everyone of them by way of encounter and when finally the leader falls, a twist comes in the form of a revelation that the ACP’s own brother Selvam(Samuthirakani) is behind the extortion ring. The rest of the story is packed with emotion and action that leads to a violent climax.

Vishal as the encounter specialist does what is required of him and it is the action scenes where he is quite at home. The only chance for him to score as an actor comes in the climax when he has to fight his own brother and his expressions show his pain to great effect. The acting honors go to Samuthirakani who has once again given a sterling performance as the ambitious politician who has turned from good to totally bad and the entire second half rests on his shoulders. The climax scene where he pleads with his father trying to justify his actions is award worthy. Kajal Agarwal has nothing much to do and fulfills the mandatory love interest role. Soori tries to forcibly tickle the funny bones and succeeds once or twice. Vela Ramamoorthy in  the role of Vishal and Samuthirakani’s father is natural and very convincing. Jayaprakash, Anandaraj, Aruldoss are some of the known faces who appear in the film.

‘Paayum Puli’ is definitely not the best work of Velraj (Camera), Antony (Editing) and D.Imman (Music). Suseenthiran has chosen an emotional action story about brothers on both sides of the law pitted against one another which could have had the audiences at the edge of their seats, but his own screenplay is contrived and lacks the grip that his other movies are famous for. The story never moves forward in the first half and keeps going in circles with the love scenes between Vishal and Kajal and the forced Soori humor coming in as dampeners. The pace picks up much later in the second half when Samuthirakani takes over, but logic takes a beating here as it is unbelievable that such an intelligent cop as Vishal will be blissfully unaware of his brother’s dark side.

Verdict : Worth watching for Vishal’s action and Samuthirakani’s acting