NAAN RAJAVAGA POGIREN MOVIE REVIEW

Naan Rajavaga Pogiren marks the directorial debut of yet another assistant of Vetrimaaran, Prithvi Rajkumar. Produced by Udhayam VLS Cine Media, the film stars Nakul, Chandini and Avani Modi in the lead roles and Manivannan, Kasthuri, Suresh, Gaurav, A Venkatesh and Seetha in supporting roles. Vetrimaaran has penned the dialogues.

Raja (Nakul) is a boxing champion based in Chennai and Jeeva (Nakul), his look alike, is an innocent man living in Himachal Pradesh. A mutual friend of both educates Jeeva about Raja. Eagerness forces Jeeva to go in pursuit of his look alike. Naan Rajavaga Pogiren is a chronicle of Jeeva's journey and what he discovers about Raja. Avani Modi plays Reema, Raja's best friend and Chandini plays Valli, a Law student, an activist and Raja's girl friend. In a nutshell, Naan Rajavaga Pogiren is a tale of love, friendship and awareness.

Nakul has done some solid work for the film and it is evident. He shows enthusiasm and intent in his performance. He has particularly done well in the action sequences and the entire credit goes to Dilip Subbarayan. Among the two lead ladies, Chandini scores better and has been awarded more screen space. Avani Modi, on the other hand, appears juvenile in parts and her dubbing (by Chinmayee) is far too expressive to match her performance.

Other senior actors, Manivannan, Kasthuri, Seetha, A.Venkatesh and Suresh, have done their small parts with perfection. Particularly, Manivannan’s gruff voice suits his role of an activist. A.Venkatesh plays the template Tamil Villain and his role has supposedly been inspired from Saamy’s Perumal Pichai, as one of the characters in the movie says. Another notable performance was Nishanth’s, who plays the friend of Nakul.

The story is the strongest element of Naan Rajavaga Pogiren. On paper, it looks excellent but what spoils it is the screenplay. Prithvi Rajkumar has attempted to do a Vetrimaaran’s style of screenplay, but hasn’t done it quite well. Too many flashbacks leave the audience befuddled at places. Another let down in the film is its poor pace.

On the other hand, Vetrimaaran’s regulars don’t fail his assistant. Cinematographer Velraj has no problem crafting each frame with impeccability and freshness. GV Prakash’s background score does very well to add to the tension prevalent in the film. But his songs don’t create the same magic. Songs are wrongly placed and one might get a feeling that there are too many of those.

On the whole, Naan Rajavaga Pogiren is an ambitious effort, by a promising new comer, but with a less gripping screenplay.