VISITOR COLUMN

Jiiva desperately needs a hit in his career. Except, Endrendrum Punnagai, his recent movies didn’t succeed much at the Box Office.  Ravi K Chandran, who has done cinematography for the leading directors in Indian Cinema, such as Manirathnam, Rajiv Menon, Priyadarshan, etc. makes his debut as Director with Yaan. Yaan songs were quite good and created some expectation for the movie, while the trailer looked like yet another commercial action movie. Let us see whether Yaan gives the much needed hit for Jiiva in this Common Man review.

Story: First Half - Jobless MBA Graduate Jiiva falls in love with Thulasi. Her dad Nassar insults Jiiva for roaming around without a job. Jiiva gets job in an Arab country and gets trapped for Drug case. What happens next forms the crux of the story.

Jiiva – He can do the role of a local Chennai guy with ease. In this movie, he plays the role of a jobless MBA Graduate. There is a scene in the restaurant, in which he speaks local Tamil Slang & audience clapped for it. Jiiva is one of the talented actors in Tamil Cinema. He has to give more importance to the scripts & his characterization in future. He didn’t have much scope at all in the second half. Most of the young heroes wouldn’t have accepted to do a characterization like this, but he has boldly agreed to do it and have almost spent 2 years for this movie. He definitely deserves a big hit and hopefully it will be his next movie.

Thulasi – Her performance in debut movie was quite average. She is doing her eleventh standard in Mumbai and it is hard to believe it. She has improved a  lot with her acting and dancing skills in the movie.

Nassar, Jayaprakash, Karuna, Thambi Ramaiah have done their job as usual as supporting actors.

Aathangarai Orathil & Nee Vandhu Ponadhu by Harris Jayaraj along with wonderful cinematography by Manush Nandan acts as saving grace for the audience.

Editor Sreekar Prasad – Movie runs for 2 hours and 35 minutes. It follows the usual commercial template of 5 songs and 3 fight sequences. Having romantic songs at inappropriate locations plays the spoilsport.  First half of the movie doesn’t have any scenes which were related to the plot of the movie. Jiiva going behind the visiting card scene was completely unnecessary and tests the patience of the audience.

Director Ravi K Chandran has chosen a good plot to make his debut in Tamil Cinema, but has completely failed with execution.  Lots of innocent Indians are getting trapped in Drug cases in Arab Countries and Overseas.   Kudos to Ravi K Chandran for choosing this plot, but he couldn’t execute it with scenes, which has absolutely no logic and makes audience smile sarcastically in most of the scenes. First half of the movie will test the patience of the audience, while the second plot starts with good note and ends completely flat.

Rating of this movie by Common Man – 1.5 / 5