‘Rajini’ Murugan, is a young man struggling to find his footing when the rest of his big family have settled down overseas. He accidentally revives his childhood romance with Karthika, the daughter of a family friend with whom they have had bad blood over a petty dispute. While repeatedly failing in attempts at business ventures, Rajini Murugan enters the bad books of an extortionist who tries to exact revenge at any cost and what ensues is what the rest of the movie has on show.
Language:
Tamil
Running Time:
159 min
Rating:
U
Release date:
14 January 2016
Directed by:
Ponram
Produced by:
N. Linguswamy
N. Subash Chandra Bose
Written by:
Ponram
Starring:
Sivakarthikeyan
Keerthy Suresh
Rajkiran
Samuthirakani
Soori
Music by:
 D. Imman
Shot by:
Balasubramaniem
Editing by:
 Vivek Harshan
Distributed by:
 Pen Movies

What’s Hot

  • Sivakarthikeyan has gone places with his meteoric rise in the recent years with only a handful of movies to his credit. In this movie, his full spectrum is on display yet again and his energy is so palpable in the talkie portions, just like in the songs. His character is cleverly shaped to be devoid of any heroics (barring the customary finale fight) so that his camaraderie with Soori takes the cake yet again.
  • The comedy works well and is made effective to a greater extent with the funny one liners and retorts penned for Sivakarthikeyan and Soori alike. The numerous references to Rajinikanth movies and dialogues are also well received by the audience. When Rajkiran joins the fun towards the climax by doing the hugely popular shoulder shrug along with Sivakarthikeyan, we know that humour is the spine holding the movie in its place
  • The core team of hit Varuthapadatha Valibar Sangam come back to provide another audio-visual treat of a village based story that is peppered with a good mix of fast, racy and melodious songs having folk song specific voices which are accompanied by bright and colorful visuals that suit the village milieu to perfection. Though we felt the songs were a bit too loud, it did not spoil the experience.

What’s Not

  • If you closely look at the plot we described, one thing would strike you – not a thread of connectivity between the lines that explain the story. That is an apt indication of how poorly conceived the screenplay was. Oscillating between two tracks about the personal life of the protagonist, the movie could not do justice to either of them and turns out to be an insincere effort at story telling which gets buried between deluges of hampering songs.
  • Keerthy Suresh is yet to produce a natural performance and this movie is no different. She mostly reacts to situations instead of acting them out and it shows on her poor facial expressions. Barring the scenes when she smiles, the rest are too superficial and absolutely devoid of any grace which make the romantic scenes turn out futile.
  • The time has probably come for Samuthirakani to reinvent himself on screen as his characters with negative shades are virtually indistinguishable from one another across the recent flurry of movies that he has been part of. To make things worse in this movie, he even gets beaten up in the climax in a fight sequence which tries hard to be humorous.
  • The movie has nothing new to offer except being a rehash of all the possible cliches in Tamil cinema – an unemployed and irresponsible lead character, lead pair belonging to warring families split over a petty feud, lead lady falling for a stalker just because he happens to be the lead actor, the gentle giant Rajkiran mouthing emotional dialogues who holds back violence for the climax – it has pretty much all the not-so-trendy-anymore stuff!

Badges

Music
Dialogues
Acting

Verdict

Verdict Stamp

Beneath all the glossy visuals, racy songs and enjoyable comedy, lies a repugnant concoction of a cliched plot, a wavering story, an insincere screenplay which spills over to spoil the experience as 'Rajini Murugan' drags on endlessly – an ordeal indeed!