Valiyavan Review

M. Saravanan came into Tamil cinema with an award winning movie “Engeyum Eppodhum”, a film that touched people’s hearts thoroughly and the next “Ivan Veramathiri” was a moderate yet won the critics review. Then comes Valiyavan. Tamil cinema’s directors have turned intelligent, not just because they take movie making seriously, but they have started to look for logic and put commercial cinema in a believable way. With Valiyavan, Saravanan has tested his limits of commercial movie making, so how has it come out? Read on

 

 

 

You are walking down a subway, minding your own business when a girl who looks stunning comes over to you and says “I Love You”. What would you do? You, here is our hero Jai, who then becomes the usual Romeo wanders around in search of the mysterious girl played by Andrea. Almost the entire first half revolves around Jai and Andrea, the former in search of the latter and then does romance kick off finally? Well, the director makes you wait, almost till we climax to determine what happens to them.The first half flows as natural as any love story would, Romeo blend songs, the stylish and a dreamy heroine, a sidekick friend with some insipid advice on love. Finally, there reaches a point, where you get all uncomfortable and scratch your head looking for a grip in the plot, the director whirlwinds a flashback that tries to convince u with some logic. Jai takes up boxing as his primary task on his to-do-list, and what follows next is  surprise.Jai is his usual self, all innocent and down to earth like the boy next door whereas Andrea just walks in glammed up and does her part credibly and is not just the usual kind of heroine, who waits for the hero to whiff some melodramatic words and a candy pop song comes out of nowhere, she has a strong presence through the plot.

 

 

 

Lets look at the positives first, to start with the lead pair of Jai and Andrea. The director has put together a pair who looks quite amicable together. We might try to stereotype Jai as much as we can, but the actor still pulls off at what he is best, this time as an action packed six pack hero he sizzles in the second half. Andrea on the other hand is gorgeous, drives down a luxurious car and presents herself remarkably. The climax street style boxing has been choreographed well, kudos to the stunt team.Saravanan’s touch is evident at places, the light hearted family style gimmicks and a movie itself based on values that we shoo away as just another incident.

 

 

 

A movie that depends on flashbacks makes the audience wait eagerly to find out unanswered questions, and if that doesn’t satisfy your appetite the movie itself would look haywire.Valiyavan becomes one such example.

A director as good as Saravanan falls prey to the lucrative commercial cinema, but does he do justice? No way!

Agreed Boxing comes out of practice, but to take on an International champion and then narrate the logic behind it with a voice over?

Apart