ANNAKODI MOVIE REVIEW

Master director Bharathiraja is known for his 'manvaasanai' movies and he loves to tell stories fresh out of the villages of Tamil Nadu, known for their innocence and earthy fragrance. Annakodi is another such typical Bharathiraja movie set in a bygone era and primarily around 3 villages - Kaariyaapatti, Uralpatti and Kidaripatti, and the movie has all the elements that you would associate with a rural potboiler.

It begins interestingly enough as the director himself is shown interacting with the elements and narrating how the people of the chosen village wanted him to showcase their tale on the cinema screen.

What unfolds is the romance between two young villagers, Annakodi and Kodiveeran, and their conflicts, set in the backdrop of an evil village head and his son Sadaiyan.

The setting and characters have more than a mere resemblance to the director's debut classic '16 Vayathinile' and the characters played by Karthika Nair and Manoj Bharathi are pretty similar to the ones played by Sridevi and Rajini in the earlier movie. Even the heroine's mother reminds you of Sridevi's mother (played by Kanthimathi).

Karthika plays the bold and beautiful Annakodi well and wins our sympathy in the second half when she is subjected to a lot of pain. Her urban body language hasn’t hampered her performance and that is a credit to her. Manoj Bharathi exhibits guts to play such a role, which an established actor would hesitate to take up. His shrill voice and expressions are apt for this role and the little song that he keeps singing to eulogize himself is catchy.

Hero Lakshman brings out the innocence and youthful nature of his character but he needs to do a lot of work to expand his repertoire of expressions.

The village milieu has been brought out authentically as always by Bharathiraja and most of the characters seem to have been hand-picked straight from the villages of the state. G V Prakash's songs are the single biggest highlight of the flick but the positioning of some of the songs makes you raise your brows. Sabesh - Murali take credit for the background score of the movie.

Bharathiraja has always been known as one director who breaks norms and doesn't hesitate to show something bold on screen and a few thoughts and scenes in the second half are in line with the director's gutsy reputation. On a lighter note, we see a lot of scenes where fingers are chewed, either Karthika's or Lakshman's.

To sum up, this melodramatic movie doesn't have a new story to tell and the closing message about love being beyond all such issues like caste, creed and religion is again a really dated thought. Annakodi might probably impact a few of the village-folk what with the high drama in the second half.