Samara Tamil Movie
Written and directed by Charles Joseph, 'Samara' can brag about its novel theme, bunch of different actors and captivating landscape. It takes brave strides to create a situation where the possibility of a bio war is lingering. The film is not totally invested in that concept; instead it follows a double murder probe that brings the protagonist to the limelight. A pall of excessive seriousness can be felt throughout the treatment and even that higher degree of sober approach hardly elicits any good impact from the tale. In fact, the plot's absurdity is exposed in the attempt to present the bio war theme with an imaginary historical attribution in the climax.
Set in Himachal Pradesh, the conflict of 'Samara' is firmly placed when two murders happen in the valley. Antony (Rahman) comes to the scene to investigate the killings and another team of police officials led by Senthil IPS (Govind Krishna) also arrives there. Meanwhile, Dr Alan Moses (Binoj Villya) is found at the crime scene with his injured daughter Jani (Sanjana Dipu). When a staggering truth is revealed in the investigation, Dr Alan is asked by Antony to go quarantine with his daughter.
Dr Azad (Rahul Madhav) shares his findings regarding the case. Antony meets Dr Zakir Rasa Khan (Bharath) to collect more evidence and he confirms that there were attempts to foment a bio-war in the country using viruses.
The film's emotional angle is revealed through the life of Dr Alan, who is ditched by his wife and daughter after he suffered serious disfigurement post a bomb blast. He yearns to live with Jani, a medical student and he gets her custody with the help of Geetha (Sonali Sudan), a prostitute. Antony's findings with the help of Dr Zakir and Dr Azad take the film to the terrains of science-fiction. Still, Charles shies away from leveraging the extravaganza of VFX though it has been used moderately.
The case's connection with science actually breaks the link of 'Samara' with us. It's an imaginary concept but struggles to convey vividly the intention of the plot. Although Rahman appears as a smart and suave officer, the film's complexity on the surface level seriously affects the elevation of the protagonist. Neither of the performances is satisfactory and only the emotional crisis of Dr Alan is portrayed impressively. Binoj Villya has shown sublime justice to the character in the repulsive appearance.
Sinu Siddharth has provided some fine visuals that nicely melt with the background score by Gopi Sundar. Action sequences are neatly choreographed but they leave only a fleeting impression in total. Despite having a novel theme, the more it tries to be smart the more it fails to connect with the audience. The theme has a pan-Indian trait but slipshod narration and shoddy execution mar the effort to highlight a possible danger that human beings might encounter in future. Here, an emotional connection with the audience is seriously missing.
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