Chekka Chivantha Vaanam

4 major stars plus a few more are squeezed into a 140 minute timeline.

Most of them have moments which they own but it doesn't make them full characters. This would have worked better as a longer film with them being etched better.

Still, this is a decent film. Arvind Swami sort of wades through a unsurprising first half and comes into his own as the action builds up. Jothika gets exactly one terrific scene. Vijay Sethupathi is very good but he is one of those who suffers from a slightly incomplete characterisation. Arun Vijay and Simbu are ok in their roles.

You can't call it a gangster film or an action film. Mani tries to cohere these two and the result is terrible. Bad screenplay..Overall the film is damn average and too boring

Chekka Chivantha Vaanam - We are sitting here simply dissecting movies from their trailers but Mani Ratnam sits back and laughs at us from another dimension.

Not a typical Mani Ratnam classic but looks like he has understood the current trend of audience well and used every actor to the best of their strengths. Felt that a few scenes could've been made more tense though and that the suspense factor was lagging at some places. ARR's rocking songs used as BG made it more involving. The ending was little predictable but gave goosebumps due to the moral justified. Can watch this movie any number of times for Vj Se's witty, natural acting as in all his other movie (such a gift to Thamizh Cinema). Kudos to the legend Santhosh Sivan as well for continuing to 'enligthen' every single movie he's part of. Finally to top it, the dialogues in this movie were way better than last few Mani Ratnam outings. Hope he continues his mastercraft from here!!

Leaving out the grandeur that Mani ratnam brings to his movies through enriched characterisation and an abstract plot, there was nothing else about this movie that left a lasting impression. All actors did justice to the roles they were assigned (including simbu :P), with Prakash Raj single-handedly outperforming everyone else. This 'band of brothers' on-screen chemistry is definitely something to look forward to. The background scores were pretty good, which is kind of expected from the maestro. And there's lots of "mass" moments which an average Tamil movie fan would definitely enjoy.

What was really disappointing was that an extremely tantalising premise was set at the end of the first half and the movie could've escalated to a whole new plane if they had not so whimpishly underplayed the big murder mystery. This took it from an gripping thriller to a filibuster. Otherwise, it's a good one time watch, that keeps you engagaed throughout but fails to close well.

Right from the very first, the movie isn't engaging enough for a Maniratnam fan. Totally, not a cohesive one at all.