Paayum Puli (Pouncing Tiger) - A bit lethargic but quite audacious!

Director Suseenthiran is known for his no-nonsense screenplay that always strives to breathe afresh even while packing cliched and stale elements into it. He did it with his ‘Paandiya Naadu’ a couple of years back which resurrected Vishal’s career and gave him a new lease of life. ‘Paayum Puli’ too attempts to foster an ‘angry young man’ image for Vishal who like any other wannabe action hero does these sort of roles with conviction and panache.

Paayum Puli is another cat and mouse game between a criminal who nurtures a political ambition and a straightforward assistant commissioner, Jayaseelan (Vishal). The ACP cracks down on the murder mystery of businessmen in Madurai being hunted down for ransom and in between he has time to shake legs with his love interest in the form of Kajal-Agarwal who has another lame role written with hardly any underpinnings.

I’m quite a fan to Suseenthiran’s narrative. As I mentioned before, the freshness in his scripts would be well punctuated with even the least significant of characters getting their acts together in order to support the movie. Here too he manages to extract decent acting from his lead man, antagonist (let’s keep it under wraps as of now, as it may spoil the show for those who haven’t watched the movie) and so many other supporting artists. There was a pretty pronounced lag in the first half where the narrative had to be supported with some lame romantic interludes between Vishal and Kajal, ripped off comedy from Soori (who tries to ape Vadivelu every bit) and some predictably laid traps in the form of encounters where Vishal was allowed to walk with all glory.

The twist in the tale was revealed during the interval, post which the narrative gathers pace and kept everyone hooked almost till the climax, which was again a bit of a rehash. The cat and mouse game post the interval was well thought out and executed without mincing predictable cliches. A director respecting the audience's intelligence is always a good sign and needs to be lauded for doing so. Other notable character is Samuthirakani as Vishal’s brother, has delivered a decent performance.

Music by Imman was good and my pick would be ‘Siluku Marame’ which was a usual folk number with some endearing freshness. Also the movie’s length of 135 minutes has helped it a lot to keep the narrative slick. Though this movie may not have scaled to the narrative dimension that Pandiya Nadu managed to put forth, it had enough going for it to mark it for a relaxed weekend watch.

Verdict: Above average

Rating: 2.75 / 5