Ayan

Deva was orphaned young and Arumugam took him in. The man is a smuggler; stones, gold, whatever will not pass customs. Deva grew up in the trade and is good at it. He works with his friend Chitti. One day a job goes wrong and Chitti is drawn in by another gang. He is sent to Cambodia and disappears there. Deva sets off to find him. What faces him is a larger organisation: the real branch of the business runs on people and drugs. K. V. Anand directs. Suriya plays Deva; Tamannaah Bhatia, Prabhu and Akashdeep Saigal are in the cast. The language is Tamil. The film did well at the Tamil box office and was among the most watched productions of its time. Part of it was shot abroad; the narrative reaches into Southeast Asia and Africa. The director trained as a cinematographer and the visual side comes forward. The matter it treats is how smuggling works; the film shows the method in detail and describes it like a craft. The narrative does not build its lead as a criminal and makes no moral reckoning. The music is by Harris Jayaraj and the songs are part of why the film stayed popular. The action is long and crowded; the chases were shot in real streets. Its limit is length; the narrative is long, the romantic line unnecessary, and the ending overblown. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil action cinema and Suriya's films. Who it is not for: it is long, conventional, and the ending where expected.