Thittam Irandu Tamil Movie

Feature Film | 2021 | UA | Mystery, Thriller | 1h 57min
Critics:
Audience:
Writer-director Vignesh Karthick propels the plot of Thittam Irandu with a series of false clues and preposterous suspense elements. He also uses many ideas, including a killer one at the end that you may not anticipate. Nevertheless, Karthick does not narrate the story with enough assuredness to make us invested in the proceedings throughout.
Jul 31, 2021 By Sreejith Mullappilly

Where To Watch:
Streaming:
   Sony LIV

A physically challenged man walks into a seemingly isolated home amid a rainy night with a weapon in his hand. The scene abruptly ends without a B-grade killing, and then we get to see Aishwarya Rajesh as a cop. The first thing we think about here is whether Aishwarya Rajesh's cop character is handling a case that involves the physically challenged person. As it turns out, she is looking into the missing case of her best friend from childhood, Ananya Ramaprasad's Deepa Surya, that involves a physically challenged man. At first, I thought it would be interesting to make the killer a person with some sort of disability, but this is not the movie you might expect it to be.


Thittam Irandu is not short on ideas - even the title essentially means Plan B. Aishwarya Rajesh looks assured in a cop role, which is unlike many of the police characters in similar films. Rajesh's Athira is looking for a groom but is not satisfied with the matches she gets from matrimonial websites. Athira discusses this with Subash Selvam's Arjun, whom she befriends during a bus journey and would later get close to. She tells Arjun that men from matrimony view her as a cop, not as a normal girl. Athira also says that she is a normal girl, who often watches romance film Alaipayuthey, with romantic aspirations common for a person of her age. As for treatment, it is refreshing to hear a woman cop in an Indian film say things like these.


But soon Thittam Irandu becomes a standard whodunit-type thriller. As with most whodunit movies, writer-director Vignesh Karthick gives us a series of red herrings to push the narrative forward. As expected, the cops catch the crippled man whom we see partially at the beginning of the movie. We expect a big chase involving Athira and the man here but the director only uses a brief chase before he surrenders. Then, there is a standard procedure where the main investigator questions the suspect, and the director uses an information dump to fill in the plot.


The investigation naturally leads to many revelations, including one twist that we hardly see coming. I cannot get to the specifics of the plot, because this is the sort of movie that relies heavily on plot machinations. So, all I will say is that the main revelation has to do with a sensitive social issue about one's identity.


The writer-director handles the issue prematurely here, though the idea is potentially terrific. When watching the big twist unravel itself, we wonder whether the characters or the makers have to use such a roundabout way to get to it. In other words, why do they have to spend a lot of the screen time with the protagonist chasing all the false clues? Why wouldn't they just cut to the case instead? The protagonist herself says what she wants in relation to the revelation, a safer idea that the maker does not use in the movie.


The performances are all fine here, but the thriller part of the film gets to such a preposterous zone that it hardly becomes convincing. Even the drama starts to test our patience at about the halfway point. The maker uses snippets to explain his idea even when the end credits roll, which would be unnecessary with a more assured narration.


Sreejith Mullappilly

   

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