Mohan Raja and Subha use every trick in the book to keep us doing the cinematic equivalent of turning the pages feverishly.Īnd yet, Thani Oruvan isn’t all that it could have been. I liked this whiteboard scene so much that I readily forgave the rather needless duet that followed. There are bigger, whistle-worthy bits with a gun case, a bug detector, a whiteboard.

Most of these twists are smartly done, and the film builds on small, unexpected things - like an exercise at the police training facilities. We think we know who’s going to end up with the rap. But as with any self-respecting work of pulp, this film’s biggest strength is its ability to keep coming up with twists. Cinematography (by Ramji) that keeps shuffling the shades. There’s style too - more style than you expect in a Mohan Raja movie. She can do more than just hold the hero’s hand. She has something that’s rare in our heroines: dignity. But she’s not allowed to get annoyingly chirpy - you don’t want to guide her gently to the nearest psychiatrist. Like all Tamil-film heroines, Mahima (Nayantara) falls for a hero who claims he’s not interested, and won’t take no for an answer. And the romance comes with a side of smarts. The comedy comes with a touch of pathos, courtesy Thambi Ramaiah, to describe whom Siddharth unleashes another term from the GRE word list inside his head: ‘imbecile’. The film doesn’t veer off into comedy tracks and romances either - at least not too much. Storyline: A young cop meets his match in a suave villain Here, we get quickly to the point.Ĭast: Jayam Ravi, Arvind Swami, Nayantara Another filmmaker would have used the sequence built around a Miss India competition to stage a full-blown pageant, with strutting models and flashing cameras. Their earlier films - Maattrraan, I, Anegan - were let down by the bloat that often afflicts mega productions. The authors, who go by the name Subha, are credited as co-writers, and this is the first time their pulp sensibility really shines through. Mohan Raja’s Thani Oruvan makes the most of the sustained cat-and-mouse game between Mithran and Siddharth. He’s the kind of villain you’d get from a screenplay discussion session between Mani Ratnam and Gautham Menon. He’s got a girlfriend from the fashion industry. But Siddharth isn’t your usual teeth-gnashing villain. Here, a blaring siren tells us he’s bad news. Had this been myth, his birth would have been accompanied by the cries of vultures. I’m not talking about one of those scenes where the villain’s face is revealed after a bullet goes off and he brings the gun down. And then he meets his match in Siddharth Abhimanyu (Arvind Swami, underplaying nicely). He knows exactly where to be, what to do, whom to shadow - it’s like he can do no wrong. When we first meet Mithran (Jayam Ravi), he’s just the best cop ever.

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