Pagal Nilavu

A man in a small town gets involved in smuggling, and an odd closeness develops between him and the policeman tracking him. At the same time a relationship with a woman begins. The narrative turns among the three of them, and who is using whom keeps changing. The subject is not crime but loyalty. None of the characters stands on a predetermined side; the man inside the law and the man outside it come from the same town and are under the same debts. The form belongs to eighties Tamil cinema: songs, fight scenes and romantic interludes. As in every film of the period, Ilaiyaraaja's music is part of the narration. This was Mani Ratnam's first film in Tamil, after working in Kannada and Malayalam. Compared with the visual rigour he would later be known for, the work here stays inside the template, and Ratnam himself separates the films of this period from the style he found later. Murali leads, with Revathi in the female role and Sathyaraj as the policeman. Who it is for: anyone curious about early Mani Ratnam and eighties Tamil genre cinema. Who it is not for: viewers expecting his mature work; what governs here is the template, and the film rarely steps outside it.