Mankatha

Vinayak is a suspended policeman. He was removed from duty over an investigation and is idle. A group of men make a plan: they will steal cricket betting money. The sum is very large and the money is kept in one place. Vinayak gets into it and joins the group. The robbery is done. The trouble starts afterwards: who will take the money is not settled and each is trying to outplay the others. Vinayak has a plan of his own and has told nobody. Venkat Prabhu writes and directs. Ajith Kumar plays Vinayak; Arjun Sarja, Vaibhav and Premgi Amaren are in the cast. The language is Tamil. It was announced as Ajith Kumar's fiftieth film and took a high result at the box office for the period. What the narrative builds is distrust; no character trusts another and the narrative keeps changing sides. Ajith plays an openly negative character here; a star in that position was unusual in mainstream Tamil cinema at the time. The narrative takes the world of cricket betting as a direct subject, a matter under discussion in those years. Yuvan Shankar Raja's music works inside the narrative and carries the action. There is a turn at the end and the narrative reveals it late. Its limit is structure; there are many characters, the plot is tangled and the women functional. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil crime films and heist narratives. Who it is not for: it is tangled, the characters thin, and the violence explicit.