Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru

A retired policeman sits at home. A young man knocks; he wants to join the force and has come for advice. Deepak Ramamoorthy starts talking. One night sixteen years ago: a report of a road accident comes in and a missing girl case opens the same night. The two seem unconnected. Deepak takes both. The person killed in the accident turns out to be linked to another file. The further he goes the more the statements change, and some pieces of the story he is telling do not fit. Karthick Naren writes and directs. Rahman plays Deepak; Ashwin Kumar, Pradeep and Santosh Krishna are in the cast. The language is Tamil. The film opened on 29 December 2016; it runs a hundred and five minutes and the music is by Jakes Bejoy. Karthick Naren was twenty one when he made it; he could not find a producer because of his age and financed it himself. The film was an unexpected box office success and made the director's name. The narrative proceeds through a narrator and that choice takes on meaning at the end. The photography is dark; the narrative is largely made of night scenes. The matter it treats is the selectiveness of memory; the narrator decides which detail to give and when. The film uses no action and builds its tension through talk. Its limit is the production; the budget shows, the acting is uneven, and the ending rests on explanation. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil crime films and low budget thrillers. Who it is not for: it is slow, dark, and the ending explanatory.