YAAN MOVIE REVIEW

Yaan has solid milieu, at least on paper. However, it is let down by a very weak narration. The movie gets to the scheme of things only by the interval, with songs and preludes for the songs in the first half. And post interval, it takes us through the daring escapades of the lead pair.

 

Noted cinematographer Ravi K Chandran makes his directorial debut with Yaan. Coming from someone of his caliber, Yaan was expected to be nothing less than sleek and stylish, and Yaan is exactly that. In fact, Ravi establishes first up that the movie is going to be a visual treat with a solid beginning, where he shows a fight out between the police and mafia, followed by the hero’s (Jiiva) version of the fight out. The latter has stop blocks of the fight, through which the hero and the heroine (Thulasi Nair) get off. 

 

For the glossiness throughout, the director and the cinematographer, Manush Nandan, deserve applause.

 

Jiiva, as Chandru, has two shades of roles - and he performs both convincingly. Thulasi Nair gets a better outing this time, and has some range of expressions in her bag.

 

Harris Jayaraj has delivered his recent best with Yaan. His rerecording (peppy in the romantic scenes and pulsating in the chase sequences) stands out. Though his songs are good to hear and lavish to watch, they mostly serve as speed breakers.

 

The biggest problem with Yaan is that all the solid knots untangle itself effortlessly, not through the lead pair's intelligence, but through the settings: a prison with no locks, borders with no security checks that can be crossed with a camel, a high profile gathering which anyone (even someone who has just escaped jail after slaying off a guard) can enter and anyone (even after being busted) can exit. With a better writing, these scenes would have been memorable, and would have made Yaan, a better watch.