Sometimes you feel the necessity to name the movies in Tamil has made naming convention a lot better. But it’s not enough the name of a movie catches your fancy, is it now? Case in point; Velur Mavattam. As much as the title promises to be a gritty action thriller about a police officer’s fight to bring the gangsters in the heartland of Tamil Nadu to books, Velur Mavattam tumbles into greater levels of predictability.

Nanda plays Muthukumar IPS, who hails from a poor family. His father is a farmer who toils for his daily life and is particular that he does not want his son to get stuck in a similar life. So the son studies arduously, becoming an IPS officer. Life as an IPS is not a cake walk and what it offers to Muthukumar as an IPS officer is what Velur Mavattam all about.

It’s very tough to make a straightforward story work, exactly the case here. Besides, the movie also has resemblances of many other movies from the past; of the top of our head, Saamy and Singham - only with no vitality. While the first half travels like a slug, the second half brightens up just a little bit. But that happiness does not last long as it plummets to a foreseeable climax.

Muthukumar studies hard, passes the IPS exam with flying colors, falls in love and marries, tides over a quarter-life crisis of sorts and goes back fighting evil. This is all that happens in the movie and in that particular order. And to say the movie is an action entertainer, the director hasn’t paid enough attention to the action, or the entertainment. He also makes an actor with potential like Nanda, remain stony throughout the movie, since he plays a cop.

Heroine Poorna doesn’t have much scope in a hero centric story. Others, including Santhanam and Azhagamperumal are just fillers. It’s surprising to note that even Santhanam couldn’t manage to pull a few laughs.

Sundar C Babu’s background score and music play spoilsport and ends up lackluster. Neither the songs nor the movie’s background score do anything to pace up the movie.

Formulaic and predictable are two words that can describe Velur Mavattam. The director seems to have set out to portray the life and struggle of an honest officer in this big, bad world. However, while drawing a line between commercial and realistic cinema, he has missed out major chunks of portions screaming for attention leaving the movie a predictable fare.

Verdict: Predictable!