Director: SR Prabhakaran
Cast: Vikram Prabhu, Manjima Mohan, Kavin, Aishwarya Dutta
Set in Trichy backdrop, Sathriyan is a gangster film where two powerful gangs, one led by Samithiram (Sarath Lohitaswa) and the other helmed by Shankar (Aruldoss) who has the support of a local minister (Poster Nandhakumar) indulge in all kinds of nefarious activities to prove their one-upmanship.
Meanwhile, to curb the soaring popularity (!) of Samuthiram in the political arena, the minister hatches a plan and bumps off the former with the help of Shankar.
Now, the onus falls on Samuthiram’s next in line –Ravi (Vijay Murugan) to look after the former’s family that includes his wife (Thara), college going daughter Niranjana (Manjima Mohan) and son Niranjan (Soundararajan) who is a coward.
When Niranjana finds it difficult to go to college owing to problems created by smalltime thugs, Ravi employs his right-hand Guna (Vikram Prabhu) as her bodyguard. Over the period, the duo falls in love, which apparently did not go well with Niranjana’s family as well as with Ravi. When Ravi warns Guna to move away from Niranjana, it is too late, as Guna wants to turn a new leaf in life.
However, in a turn of events, Shankar brutally attacks Guna with the help of his underlings. Fortunately, a medical student (Kavin) on intern saves Guna’s life. How Guna fights back his enemies and saves his love forms the rest of the story.
Vikram Prabhu has done a good job and as usual he is treat to watch in action sequences. Manjima is okay in a role with substance. All other baddies are just about adequate. Kavin and Aishwarya Dutta don’t contribute much to the story. Yogi Babu appears from nowhere in two scenes and disappears.
SR Prabhakaran has chosen a gangster plot, which is an all-time favorite of Indian cinema, provided it is well executed. Though the film starts off with a bright note with some interesting twists, it fizzles out midway with an unexciting screenplay. There are no convincing backstories as to how and why Vikram Prabhu resorted to rowdyism. The director could have infused few twists and turns and enough enjoyable elements in the later half to sustain audiences’ interest. However, some of the dialogues are noteworthy and the message against violence is conveyed well.
Director: SR Prabhakaran
Cast: Vikram Prabhu, Manjima Mohan, Kavin, Aishwarya Dutta
Set in Trichy backdrop, Sathriyan is a gangster film where two powerful gangs, one led by Samithiram (Sarath Lohitaswa) and the other helmed by Shankar (Aruldoss) who has the support of a local minister (Poster Nandhakumar) indulge in all kinds of nefarious activities to prove their one-upmanship.
Meanwhile, to curb the soaring popularity (!) of Samuthiram in the political arena, the minister hatches a plan and bumps off the former with the help of Shankar.
Now, the onus falls on Samuthiram’s next in line –Ravi (Vijay Murugan) to look after the former’s family that includes his wife (Thara), college going daughter Niranjana (Manjima Mohan) and son Niranjan (Soundararajan) who is a coward.
When Niranjana finds it difficult to go to college owing to problems created by smalltime thugs, Ravi employs his right-hand Guna (Vikram Prabhu) as her bodyguard. Over the period, the duo falls in love, which apparently did not go well with Niranjana’s family as well as with Ravi. When Ravi warns Guna to move away from Niranjana, it is too late, as Guna wants to turn a new leaf in life.
However, in a turn of events, Shankar brutally attacks Guna with the help of his underlings. Fortunately, a medical student (Kavin) on intern saves Guna’s life. How Guna fights back his enemies and saves his love forms the rest of the story.
Vikram Prabhu has done a good job and as usual he is treat to watch in action sequences. Manjima is okay in a role with substance. All other baddies are just about adequate. Kavin and Aishwarya Dutta don’t contribute much to the story. Yogi Babu appears from nowhere in two scenes and disappears.
SR Prabhakaran has chosen a gangster plot, which is an all-time favorite of Indian cinema, provided it is well executed. Though the film starts off with a bright note with some interesting twists, it fizzles out midway with an unexciting screenplay. There are no convincing backstories as to how and why Vikram Prabhu resorted to rowdyism. The director could have infused few twists and turns and enough enjoyable elements in the later half to sustain audiences’ interest. However, some of the dialogues are noteworthy and the message against violence is conveyed well.
The love scenes aren’t bad because, again, Guna and Niranjana are treated like characters. She’s not a basket case. She falls for him because he becomes her bodyguard for a while and she feels safe around him. It’s not the most plausible of scenarios, but Manjima Mohan makes us buy this simple, dignified girl who rarely raises her voice. (It’s the kind of role Lakshmi Menon would have played a couple of years ago.) The director takes his time with the romance, and we get a sense that Guna’s transformation isn’t sudden. He continues to kill. His signature move is a series of quick slashes with the knife, the stainless steel version of the Five Point Palm Heart Exploding Technique. A bigger hero wouldn’t be able to get away with this.
The biggest problem is the running time, over two-and-a-half hours. A painful Yogi Babu comedy track ends as abruptly as it begins. Even worse is the budding romance between a medical college student (Kavin) and a girl who goes around slapping men who bump into her. She slaps him. He slaps her back, saying that sometimes men can bump into you accidentally too. That’s enough. She falls for him. Apparently, we’re still looking at women who just need one tight slap to be put in place. This track, too, is abandoned abruptly. But the Kavin character, who becomes Guna’s friend, shows how innocents become collateral damage in this kind of movie.
Vikram Prabhu has loosened up considerably, but he still makes us wonder what a better actor would have done with the part. His lectures are annoying. It’s almost as if the director (who makes good use of screen space) realised he was making a character-oriented drama that’s going to make some people shift in their seats, and so let’s give them the things they’re used to: speeches, women being slapped, bad comedy. But Guna isn’t like the 5000 earlier rowdies in Tamil cinema. He gets to repeat a line that Samuthiram used. He says he doesn’t want to tell Niranjana he’s leaving on an assignment, because she’ll stop him. For a change, we get to scratch the surface, and we see the fear, the insecurities beneath the bluster. I was pleasantly surprised.
