Shiva and Gautam are buddies and HR professionals in the same firm. Gautam’s insatiable thirst for wooing women, leads him to abuse a bank marketing call that Shiva receives. Madhu, a miffed friend of the woman in the receiving end, starts to taunt Shiva by making prank calls which later blossoms into real romance just over the phone without having seen each other. When they feel the time is right to meet and communicate their mutual love, Madhu gets entangled in the bad books of a deadly organized crime syndicate. Her struggle to wriggle out of this with the help of Shiva and his friends is what forms the rest of the story.
Language:
Tamil
Running Time:
126 min
Rating:
U
Release date:
23 January 2015
Directed by:
Cable Sankar
Produced by:
Thuvar Chandrasekar
Written by:
Cable Sankar
Starring:
Thaman Kumar
Arundhati
Vincent Asokan
Sivakumar
Music by:
P. C. Shivan
Shot by:
Vijay Armstrong
Editing by:
Sai Arun
Distributed by:
FCS Creations

What’s Hot

  • Thaman Kumar as Shiva, the protagonist looks smart and handsome and has a wide range of acting skills. The same can be said of his pair Arundhati as well, as she can be the pleasant Madhu in love as well as the annoying lady in distress. The scenes surrounding the pre-interval block when their first meet is thrown off due to unpleasant events, bring out the best in both of them and the choice of voices is a good enhancement to their roles.
  • Vijay Armstrong has done a cool job with the camera in the number of car chase scenes that the story demands. His work is also neat in one roof top chase sequence featuring Thaman and a mercenary who tries to kill Arundhati. The numerous scenes featuring the lead pair have also been shot at close-ups to capture the mood and expressions well.
  • The title song has an off-beat theme based on the state of ignorance, hypocrisy and lack of mercy in the modern lives of people. This Bossu Bossu… song features some unique lyrics and voices including that of the director Cable Sankar himself where the music director P. C. Shivan stands out with his composition. The visuals are interesting as well with some nice effects built into newspaper clippings.
  • There have been quite a few movies recently based on the effects of organized crime on the middle class and this story has taken another modus operandi of such syndicates and tried to develop a romantic thriller based on that. This deserves mention for the decent amount of detailing and the efforts put out to explain the working through visuals.

What’s Not

  • The lead pair fall in love over the phone – yes we have seen this quite often, they never meet in the first half – yes we have seen few times as well. But all of a sudden the first shot of the second half, they meet which kind of make us think the entire hide and seek has no bearing on the second half. This was one out of many instances that showed a glaring disconnect between the 2 halves and it seems like viewing two different films before and after the interval.
  • Apart from the lead pair, the slew of other support characters is given no real importance or proper definition with respect to the value adds to the story. Madhu’s family and Shiva’s friends are just part of the backdrop and momentarily take part in the proceedings. Even the cop friend of Shiva is not convincing and Balaji as Gautam is that stereotypical friend who is an expert with women and dishes out not-so-funny one-liners on friendship and love.

Badges

Verdict

Verdict Stamp

With an intriguing title – 'Thottaal Thodarum' is about how misfortunes will follow until you stand up to it. With Cable Sankar at the helm, his experience as a cinema analyst and critic could have made a better movie - but this is nevertheless a good try with an interesting core, a capable lead pair and a sound technical crew managing to pull off a decent show despite few flaws!