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Gautham Menon’s thriller could be worth a watch
Menon is confident of the film, which he says is the biggest he has done in his career to date on a budget of over Rs50 crores.
- PUBLISHED: Thu 5 Feb 2015, 9:13 PM UPDATED: Thu 25 Jun 2015, 7:24 PM
Nearly three years after Neethaane En Ponvasantham, director Gautham Menon’s tribute to romance that failed to excite the box office or impress the critics, he is back with one of the most anticipated movies of the year, the Ajith Kumar starrer Yennai Arindhaal.
Menon doesn’t call the gap a hiatus as his production house was busy making films including Thanga Meenkal, which went on to win the National Award for Best Tamil Film and earned rave reviews in the film festival circuit.
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Menon is one of the few directors whose name has as much clout as that of Tamil’s young superstars at the box office. His appeal transcends Tamil cinema, and finds effortless acceptance across south India.
That, indeed, is hard-earned. A mechanical engineering graduate, he was passionate about films and chased his dreams right through college days. Assisting cinematographer-director Rajeev Menon on Minsara Kanavu was the first step, which he consolidated with a stylish debut, the Madhavan-starrer Minnale that was also remade in Hindi.
Proving that he was no one-film wonder, he awed audiences with the stylised Kaakha Kaakha, starring Surya, which defined a new paradigm for action movies in Tamil. The story of encounter specialists had the signature style of Gautham, including his penchant for romance. The Kamal Haasan-starrer Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu brought even more glory, and Gautham indeed had arrived with a clean hat-trick.
In Yennai Arindhaal, he is returning to the ‘police days’ but this time with Ajith Kumar, who has such mass appeal, the challenge before Gautham will be not only in satiating the expectations of the star’s fans but also making peace with critics who expect a real come-back of the director. Teaming up with Ajith, instead of Surya who rocks in cop roles, says Menon, is quite coincidental more so because a film he had planned with Vijay has been delayed.
Menon is confident of the film, which he says is the biggest he has done in his career to date on a budget of over Rs50 crores. While amassing that looks easy now, what with the mega-initials guaranteed, the focus squarely is on how Menon will present Ajith – especially as he has announced that the actor will appear in four guises.
The film is all about an inner journey through the life of Sathyadev, a cop played by Ajith, and how knowing him (as the title suggests) better, the people who cross his path learn to understand the complexities and different shades of his character.
With Trisha in the lead, Gautham also bagged a casting coup of sorts. Ajith and Trisha share a fantastic on-screen chemistry that was evident in Mankatha and Kireedam, although their first coming together in Ji was poorly received. The film also has an ensemble cast including Anushka Shetty and Vivek, who tries to make a valiant comeback to glory days in the role of a police officer named ‘Revolver Richard.’
Yennai Arindhaal also marks the teaming up of Gautham Menon with Harris Jayaraj. The two have always come up with winning songs, and the film’s compositions are already chart-busters. But what might truly excite film lovers is that Menon is collaborating with two accomplished writers for the movie – Thiagarajan Kumararaja of Aaranya Kandam fame and Sridhar Raghavan, the director of Johnny Gaddar and Ek Hasina Thi.
The writers have a penchant for bringing out the dark side of human nature, and given Menon’s affinity for complex, psychologically traumatised characters, Yennai Arindhaal could spring some interesting surprises.
Yennai Arindhaal is playing at theatres in the UAE this week.