Viduthalai: Part I

Kumaresan is a new police constable. He is assigned to an operation: the leader of an organisation active in forest country, Perumal Vaathiyar, is to be captured. Kumaresan is sent as a driver; he does not take part in the fighting and is lowest in the unit. The operation area is a village; the people support the organisation, or are counted as supporting it, and the police take everyone in for questioning. Kumaresan does not agree with what he sees but does not object either. He meets a woman in the village. He is caught between two sides and at some point has to choose. Vetrimaaran directs. Soori plays Kumaresan and Vijay Sethupathi plays Perumal; Bhavani Sre and Gautham Vasudev Menon are in the cast. The language is Tamil. The source is a story by the writer Jeyamohan. Soori had been known until then as a comic actor; this was his first dramatic lead and his performance is what is most cited. The film opens with a long single take; what follows an attack on a train is shown without a cut. The matter it treats is state violence; the film neither clears the police nor shows them as one dimensional. It was planned in two parts and this first one does not complete the story. The narrative shows the villagers' position in detail and the interrogation scenes are hard. Its limit is independence; the narrative ties into the second part and the ending stays open. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil cinema and drama on political ground. Who it is not for: the violence is very explicit, the story unfinished, and the subject heavy.