Kirumi was a finely made film. The atmosphere was set up beautifully. The goons, the police, the women, they all fit into their roles. And there was a certain authenticity to the happenings on screen (except perhaps that song between wife and husband. I thought they were going to launch into a quickie, but hey, who expected that they were going to eye each other lustfully for ten minutes!). The milieu is presented like it was actually out there. The way informers function or how the police deal with stuff, I believed every bit of it and that spells very good film making.
But...
I walked out very underwhelmed. It took me a bit of reflection to figure out what my problem with the film was. It plays like a small-guy-rockets-his-way-up adventure for the most part. Watching Kathir and his ambitious eyes you'd think he's going to kick some ass and become a big deal, if with a few casualties on the way. But the movie ends up being very realistic. Its primary concept turns out to be a caution against dreaming big when functioning in the realm of police and crime. And that is practical, too.
It perhaps isn't a problem with the film at all. It is perhaps a problem with me, and an audience like me, who is raised on a diet of escapism wherein highly convenient incidences happen to propel the protagonist to great heights despite all odds. An example which is terribly facetious is Saguni, the Karthi starrer where the small guy becomes a big deal in the most convenient ways possible. I hated that one. And yet, that was the kind of film I was hoping Kirumi would turn out to be. So yeah, it appears we like our films well-made, but we also seem to want it to feed our (often implausible) dreams.
Kirumi handles an important subject with great technical mastery. Everything works. Music, cinematography, performances, editing, writing, everything. And yet, it may not receive the laurels it richly deserves purely because its audience isn't prepared for such cinema. It's something like there's a superhero costume party and someone comes dressed up as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
