The title represents a small town where the story takes place. An opportunity to see the old Kamal Haasan. It was like been ages, seen him in this kind of attire, especially Tirunelveli accent was phenomenal. As usual, his performance and expressions stole the show and none others were matched his par in the movie. Nothing wrong to call it was his show. Kind of addicted to 'Yeya En Kottikkaara' song. A typical Tamil song, if you are, you might feel the deep.
It was a remake of the Malayalam movie 'Drishyam', which was inspired by the Japanese novel 'The Devotion of Suspect X'. I have not seen the original movie, but seen the Japanese version based on the same book. There are no major comparisons, except the crime, the rest was completely rewritten to suit the Indian audience. But the writer denies, by saying neither book adaptation nor inspired.
I have heard that the narration was very emotional and the characters were more guilt feel than the Malayalam. Initially Rajnikath was considered for the main role, but happy it went to Kamal Haasan. None other than him would have suited better to portray Suyambulingam. He would definitely bring the emotions out of you easily. After Sivaji, he's the king of those roles. At the plenty of the scenes I was amazed by his execution, especially in the end scene when he finally breakdown with guilt.
I don't believe when people say the original version is a must watch. Every film industry in India has fine actors, especially this film recruited their best as of I have heard. So I recommend your native version or the closest one to opt. The advantage in the remakes are, a chance to fix if there were any flaws in the original. Since it was directed by the same filmmaker, I strongly suggest the neural audience to pick between the original and this one, because of the naturalistic portrayal of the rural family. But if you prefer stylish, especially for the non- Indian, there's always Bollywood.
9/10
