Aarathu Sinam, Movie Review

Crime fiction is an addiction. As an avid reader of this genre, I can attest to that. One of the best sub-genres in this is the tale of the tortured detective. Usually, it’s a cathartic experience for the detective to brave through his battle with his daemons, while fighting crime, the battle is usually with painful memories, addiction, or addiction to erase painful memories, or pure addiction.

Aarathu Sinam (Anger won’t subside – paraphrasing the popular Ovvaiyar’s Aathichudi “Aaruvathu Sinam”, of course) is a very sincere attempt at remaking of an excellent Malayalam thriller by Jeethu Joseph, and the film maker has succeeded in creating a gripping film, thankfully not a shot by shot remake, although the screenplay is heavily influenced by the original. Aarathu Sinam is the story of Aravind, a drunkard cop who is roped in to solve a mystifying series of killings. How Aravind sees the clues with his sharp insight and helps solves the case forms the crux of the story.

Arulnithi is improving with every film, and he plays the brooding character to a T, and his usual subtle acting works best for this character, in the original, Prithiviraj couldn’t appear as handsome even when he was unkempt. Here, Arulnithi does a great job and he carries the story on his shoulders instead of letting the story direct him. The supporting cast has done an adequate job, although Robo Shankar’s ‘movie clichéd’ cop comedy felt forced not resulting in any laughs. Radha Ravi and Charlie breezed through their respective roles owing to their experience.

Arivazhagan who debuted with the excellent thriller Eeram, directed this movie from the original story of Jeethu Joseph. It’s no surprise that tales like this come from the Malayalam industry and story and screenplay really reflects the maturity and avoids any masala distractions. The background score and the couple of montage songs blend into the movie very well, especially the BGM during the initial sequence of Arulnithi’s intro is amazingly done and reminds you of Kaakha Kaakha. The final sequence where the hero saves the day by rescuing the victim, by slaying the antagonist and his demons reminds you of many of the Hollywood or Indian movies you would’ve seen but both the intro and climax sequences form perfect book ends to a good thriller.

Not to nitpick, but the screenplay could’ve been little bit more racy, but as I said in the beginning, one movie which has to handle both the crime and the protagonist’s struggle has to make some compromise so it doesn’t really spoil the entire experience.

Aaarathu Sinam – Crime & Addiction