Aaryan

Rating - 3.25/5

A serial crime investigation thriller with a middling storyline in a cliche package.

The plot of the story revolves through the life of a failed writer craving for recognition executes the murders as per the story of his unpublished book.

Praveen has reincarnated the Manorama web series Menaka and watching the same content again lacked freshness. He has pulled out the story convincingly with the regular police procedurals, cat and mouse play and with the pacing kept the audience engaged.

Good performances from Vishnu Vishal, Selvaraghavan, Shradha Shrinath, Manasa Choudhary & Mala Parvathy. Good work by the technical behind the screen crew especially the DOP Harish Kannan, editor San Lokesh and the sound designer Sachin/Hariharan for their contributions.

The mediocre story makes this movie a one time watch with no major takeaways.

Aaryan (2025) begins on a strong note and manages to grab attention early on. The setup is interesting, and the initial portions build curiosity, making it feel like the film is heading somewhere meaningful.

However, as the story progresses, the narrative starts to lose focus. The plot becomes inconsistent, and the momentum built in the first half slowly fades. Certain scenes feel unnecessary, and the film struggles to maintain clarity and direction.

Performances are decent, but they are not enough to compensate for the weak storytelling in the later portions. What could have been a more impactful film ends up feeling stretched and uneven.

Overall, Aaryan is watchable, especially for its opening portions, but it does not fully deliver on its promise.

As we all know how Tamil/Malayalam movies have a great concept which can make the minds think, but lack the capacity to portray them on the screen. This, is exactly one of those for me! On paper you can see the hook: a big, twisted mastermind game set up years in advance, a cop team racing to decode the pattern, a hero who is supposed to be both mass and tormented. In execution though, the film keeps tripping over itself. Every major "plan" depends on coincidences so delicate that a traffic jam or someone deciding to stay home would collapse the whole chain, so instead of feeling awed by the villain's intelligence I kept thinking how impossible it all was! The movie clearly wants to be many things at once like an emotional drama about trauma, a slick cat-and-mouse thriller, a stylish actioner with mass elevations and the result is a narrative that never settles into one confident identity. Whenever the police are scrambling against the clock the tension briefly works, yet the performances wobble between earnest and unintentionally funny, then the film slams into long stretches of backstory and random romance that drag the pace down and explain far more than they actually deepen. By the end, I wasn't furious or bored out of my mind, just stuck in that middle zone where I can admit there is ambition, a couple of neat ideas, a few well-shot portions and a basic watchability, yet I also know I'm not revisiting it or recommending it loudly to anyone. It feels like a high-concept script shot with dated sensibilities and overcooked "mass" instincts, leaving behind a movie that isn't a total disaster, but definitely wastes the potential it started with.

Alagar (K. Selvaraghavan) is a loner who steps out of his house one day with a plan: he walks into a talk-show studio, holds the host and audience hostage and announces that he has written a book. A book no publisher wanted. Its story? A serial killer who will murder one person a day for five days, announcing each victim's first name one hour before the killing. The talk-show host laughs it off, calling it unoriginal. Alagar laughs too and kills himself the moment the police break in.

And then, the next day, someone dies.

Then the next. And suddenly, the police must chase a killer who is already dead.

On paper, Aaryan sounds fantastic. The premise could've been a sharp, nerve-tightening thriller. But the execution feels straight out of a dusty VHS shelf from the 90s. The acting is flat across the board. Alagar is supposed to be the chilling mastermind behind a decade-long revenge plan, but he never comes off as frightening, layered, or even particularly clever.

The "hero," Vishnu Vishal, doesn't help either. He plays another brooding, lone-wolf cop, except his perfectly styled hair and tailored shirts make him look more like a fashion model on his way to brunch than someone who hasn't slept properly in ten years. Introducing him in slow motion, fists flying dramatically, might have worked in 2002, but in 2025 it's unintentionally funny.

And then there's the killing plan itself.

It sounds intricate. But the moment you think about it, the whole thing collapses.

Since Alagar is dead, he needs his victims to follow their routines with absurd precision. But how could he possibly predict something like a random diver choosing that specific air tank on that specific day at that exact moment? He couldn't. John Doe (Se7en) and Jigsaw (Saw) would roll their eyes. Alagar supposedly planned this for a decade, but everything depends on coincidences so fragile that a butterfly sneezing could ruin the sequence.

The pacing is another problem. Whenever the police are racing against the clock, the movie suddenly gets tense, but the acting remains unintentionally hilarious. Then the film slams the brakes to 40 km/h to deliver unnecessary backstories: the hero's random romance, or the tragic lives of the soon-to-be victims. These scenes don't deepen the narrative; they just derail it.

By the end, Aryan left me wondering what genre it wanted to be. Thriller? Drama? Soap opera with bombs? The idea is strong, but the execution can't keep up. It's like someone took a high-concept script and shot it with 90s directing tools, 2025 slow-motion testosterone and a huge pile of coincidences.

Aaryan starts off as an awesome and compelling investigation, driven by Vishnu vishal's smart and intelligent portrayal of the detective, making the film's smooth screenplay fly by. The movie introduces a new and highly appreciable attempt in Tamil cinema with the villain's unique plot of executing murders after his own death. Even its a revolutionary script but some scenes are predictable.

The highlight of the film, however, is the extraordinary Music and BGM which elevates every scene and perfectly complements the thriller's mood.

While Selvaraghavan absolutely rocked as the villain, and Shraddha's acting was decent but Vishnu vishal's pair heroine was underdeveloped.

The film stumbles slightly because the conclusion is not deeply emotional, despite the director trying to convince the audience of the villain's motivations-a premise I personally found morally challenging, as one man should never decide another's life, even for a perceived 'good.' Overall, it's certainly better than some other logical mistake crime stories, though it doesn't reach the level of a Ratchasan.