Review of the Tamil movie Por Thozhil directed by Vignesh Raja

Vignesh Raja's debut movie Por Thozhil revolves around the story where 2 cops are on a mission to hunt down a serial killer.  This is a stereotypical theme, which Kollywood audience are used to from the days of Sigappu Rojakkal but the director has navigated through the plot with rich twists and tight screenplay, maintaining the suspense all through the movie.

A quintessential successful movie has 2 critical elements- one, the story or the plot; two-the cast who should be capable of shouldering the weight of the screenplay and Vignesh scores high on both these elements, making this movie a successful one. Loganathan (Sarath Kumar) is a seasoned cop and operates in the Criminal Investigation department; a cynical guy who prefers operating in isolation. Ashok Selvan (Prakash) is a rookie police who is tagged to Loganathan  as a mentee, an accidental cop with no moustache!! Loganathan and Prakash are assigned a challenging task of identifying the serial killer and the story begins there. 

After a long time, thanks to Vignesh,  that the finesse in Sarath Kumar’s acting has come out very well, who is portrayed as a strict and an aggressive cop. Ashok, who is known to pull off any character with ease, doesn’t surprise us and carries himself well through the film and does enough justice to his role. The dialogues are powerfully written and delivered well that it garners enough attention from the audience. Especially in the scenes where Loganathan replies curtly to Prakash as if the intent is to brush him aside, while the latter anticipates a pat on the back, which puts a smile on the onlookers’ face. Veena (Nikhila Vimal ), the female lead, is part of the investigative crew and a mild romance brews between Prakash and her, which lightens the mood of this otherwise serious film. She plays a not so important role in the movie, more like a second fiddle and a moral booster to the lead actors, which left me wondering how long this trend with female leads would continue!!

Without a doubt, the movie keeps the audience on their toes, with BGM and the scenes shot in darkness adding more fear quotient to frighten them. However, the second half becomes a little guessable, if one watches the movie attentively. For instance, one could easily guess what Ashok Selvan would do after picking up the gun in his hand in the climax. Kudos to Vignesh for choosing Late Sharath Babu for the role he played in the movie,  who does his part pretty neatly, with his stern and emotionless face. It was a surprise to me that he could carry such menacing looks on his tender-looking face, so convincingly. 

This movie certainly can be watched once to experience the ‘what next’ thrill and perhaps for the second time, to appreciate the dialogues in the movie. The director also gets a big like as he methodically explains through the character of Sarath Kumar the psychological aspects of a serial killer, like Sherlock Holmes does to Watson! There is no dearth of pyscho killer movies in Tamil cinema but I would say Por Thozhil stands out from the crowd for one simple reason for it explicitly establishes and captures a strong connection between childhood/mental trauma and the genesis of such pyscho killers, leaving an important message highlighting the responsibility of the parents and the society in treating a fellow human be it a kid or a grown up, with basic human decency, if not with love and affection.