Arivazhagan's Aarathu Sinam marks the arrival of a remake of yet another brilliant Malayalam film, Jeethu Joseph's Memories that had Prithviraj playing the lead.
Aarathu Sinam is the story of an intelligent cop, who seems to be a lost cause due to hard circumstances, but is revived to his usual best by a serial murder case.
Jeethu Joseph's story is the strongest factor of Aarathu Sinam. Considering the genre, which is widely explored in the west unlike in our industry, the movie comes as a fresh one here. Although, the killer's patterns and deep encrypted messages, paint him as a psychotic serial murderer who takes his time and enjoys his heinous works, the personal motives behind the crimes contradicts his personality. A simpler, forthright character sketch with a motive to avenge, would have worked well too. But good art needs a bit of drama, after all.
Arulnithi makes a good cop. With his face, that's best explained as impassive and stony, he pulls of the melancholic, pessimistic, ever drunk cop effectively and as a well groomed cop in the initial stage, he shows style. In a particular cemetery sequence, where he breaks down emotionally, he makes a very strong impact, despite his subtle performance.
Ishwarya Rajesh, in her brief appearance, shows grace. Aishwarya Dutta doesn't add any value to the film though. Robo Shankar has a solid role of a sloppy police officer but has dialogues that seem to force the humour, for the sake of entertainment. That goes against him, despite his honest performance. Radha Ravi has a good role too and no wonder he brings his sharp expertise to the table.
Dialogues are an issue throughout the movie. The deliberation to convey certain information is evident and hence causes artificiality.
Where Arivazhagan proves to be an effective director is at getting the job perfectly done from his technical team. His visual sense is brilliant and apt to suit the stories he selects. Aravind Singh's cinematography is fast and elegant. His navigation shot of Madurai in a sequence towards the end of the movie, the long encounter sequence in a construction site in the beginning and certain establishment shots are the work of a creatively superior technician. Rajesh Kannan's editing is spectacularly slick and stylish and very pacy, contributing effectively to the thriller factor of the movie.
Thaman's background scores play a huge role and the composer has done justice to his part. His scores in the initial encounter sequence and the brilliant opening titles are arguably two of his best works till date.
Although the film has freshness and is fairly gripping, a tighter screenplay could have made it one of the best movies in the genre. There are certain repetitive flashback shots that could have been reduced. The film also has only two songs and both of them are montages. A few might feel that the first song could have been done away with, considering it interferes with the serious nature of the film and also the fact that most of the shots used in the song are repeated in the later part of the movie.
All that considered, Arivazhagan's Aarathu Sinam is definitely a progressive Tamil movie that deserves a watch for its sincere attempt at the less explored investigative crime thriller genre.
Verdict: For all those hungry crime thriller addicts, Aarathu Sinam is a good watch
