Maayavan Tamil Movie
Producer C.V. Kumar who is considered to be one among a few new wave of Kollywood producers who believe in the abilities and sensibilities of young moviemakers and moviegoers respectively tasted success initially by handpicking movies with interesting threads and fresh narratives. He is also an unsung 'celebrity-maker' who is behind the names like Karthik Subbaraj, Bobby Simha and Vijay Sethupathi to name a few.
He also stands as a rare example of a producer who only believes in the script and doesn't care about the stars in it. It seems after a streak of some mediocre films at the box-office, he has decided to take things into his own hands by debuting as a director with 'Maayavan', a sci-fi thriller.
A series of murders happen and Inspector Kumaran (Sundeep Kishan) even witnesses one which happens in broad daylight. The killer attacks him and gets killed by Kumaran. But he is unable to connect the pieces and make sense of the other murders that happen in a similar fashion. After some serious soul-searching and investigation, he identifies the commonalities behind those murders and becomes aware of the "science" behind the happenings.
The most intriguing part came towards the climax, which was more of an inference - watch out for the movie's opening (which was also the climax), which is set in 2037, Trichy, with Ilayaraja's 'Keladi kanmani' playing in the background.
The biggest setback of Maayavan is its plot. It draws a lot of similarities with 'Bogan' that released a year back. Bogan had a fantasy element with religious underpinnings, but here it is more to do with robotic nano neuron stimulators, which gives a heads-up for the Kollywood audience who are already bracing up for Shankar's lecture of his second thesis on Robotics.
A sigh of relief on the heroine front too. Lavanya Tripathi plays a young psychiatrist, Ramya, with a never-ending itch to care for the hero's well-being. She even admits it in one of the scenes that certain people she sets her eye on, she feels that she would need to spend a lifetime with them - one of the many cliches.
Bagavathi Perumal in a sub-inspector role walked quite cool but felt anyone but a cop. However, he had some emotional connection with the plot towards the end, but the wheels were coming off by then from the flight that was on autopilot.
Daniel Balaji, as a 'motivational speaker' was quite dumb and Jayaprakash as the scientist was the usual suspect for the role. Jackie Shroff's brief appearance towards the latter half added some star power to the movie, but the proceedings were on predictable lines.
Before the end credits, a few real-world examples of such scientific undertakings in the west were mentioned, justifying the plot. But the plot had numerous loopholes, that too in the world of cloud computing, if we are to showcase a search for a "disk", then we should go back to the caves. The graphics too were not up to the mark and screamed for more budget, as they were tacky and lacked finesse.
Director C.V.Kumar has nevertheless come up with an interesting plot, whose ending was more interesting than the plot itself. He should try and make a sequel to this one. For now, I would let this pass by as a "learning curve" for the director in him, while waiting for some more interesting tales from an intriguing producer.
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