Por Thozhil

Prakash has just come out of the police academy. He is good on paper but not in the field; the sight of blood makes him ill and he cannot stand beside a body. His first assignment is a murder investigation. The man with him is Loganathan; a hard, impatient senior officer who has spent his years at this. He does not trust the new man at all. Young women are being killed in the district and the method is the same each time. An old file is opened; similar murders were committed years ago and the man responsible went to prison. Now there is a question: how is a man inside committing these killings. Vignesh Raja directs; it is his first feature. Ashok Selvan plays Prakash and R. Sarathkumar plays Loganathan; Sarath Babu and Nikhila Vimal are in the cast. The language is Tamil. The film opened without a large publicity campaign and stayed in cinemas a long time on the strength of word of mouth. The matter it treats is how a criminal is made; the film puts the perpetrator's past rather than the solution at its centre. The narrative rests on the relation between the two policemen and the tension also comes from the distance between them. Sarathkumar had long been seen in action parts; here he plays in a different register. The film does not show the violence and the killings stay off camera. The narrative holds long on the explanation at the end and tries to build a psychological ground. Its limit is the resolution; the explanation at the end is too tidy and the tension drops there. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil thrillers and detective narrative. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the ending explanatory, and the pace slow.