Maaran
Director: Karthick Naren
Cast: Dhanush, Malavika Mohanan, Samuthirakani, Smruthi Venkat, Jayaprakash, Ramki
Disney+ Hotstar’s latest offering, Maaran, written and directed by Karthick Naren (Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru), drowns in absurdity. A senseless screenplay makes an effort to highlight political corruption tempered with journalistic probe carried out by Dhanush’s titular character, Mathimaaran. It fails to convince.
A few minutes into the film, Maaran’s father, journalist Sathyamoorthy (Ramki), is butchered on the street as he is taking his pregnant wife to hospital. She dies giving birth to a baby girl, who grows into Shwetha (Smruthi Venkat). Her elder brother, Maaran, follows in his father’s footsteps, fearlessly reporting societal and administrative misdeeds. And things come to a head when he exposes a scam involving electronic voting machines – the man behind being a powerful ex-Minister, Pazhani (an effective Samuthirakani).
Admittedly, the plot resonates with the prevailing political climate in which allegations of the machines being tampered with are common. But the scripting is so shoddy that the two-hour long movie becomes an unbearable watch with even a cursory modicum of authenticity missing.
Imagine Maaran walking into a newspaper office – which resembles a fashion studio – for an interview and clinching the job in the most illogical manner. Is this how media employees are hired? His uncle (Aadukalam Naren), lives in a swanky house. Nothing wrong, except that he is presses clothes for a living and his mobile unit is stationed outside this posh building!
Midway, the movie slips into the thriller genre with Shwetha being kidnapped and burnt alive – provoking Maaran into a frenzied stupor. In the end, when revelations come, this sequence would fall flat on its face.
The film crawls into the same old slot of Maaran taking on dozens of men singlehandedly – that is when he is not lecturing about why the media should strive to be fair, free and fearless. When he is not into either of these, he is on a romantic mode with his office colleague, Thara (Malavika Mohanan). Or, we are thrown into the sister-brother ties of chivalry and protective guardianship. Brother Maaran cannot even visualise his little sister getting married and flying away some day.
All of these have been done to death in Tamil cinema, and here in Naren’s work, they have all been programmed to prop up Dhanush as a do-gooder, an unblemished journalist and, above all, a hero who cannot be vanquished! Suspension of disbelief? Come on, there is a line here as well.
It is sad that despite the common notion that Dhanush is a good actor, I am yet to see any definitive performance arc in him. In movie after movie, he sports the same appearance and expressions – a kind of sad sack figure! Maybe, he needs a good director like the ones which his father-in-law, Rajinikanth, had in the beginning of his career, when he did some memorable stuff. The ones that strike me even today are K. Balachander’s Apoorva Raagangal and Moondru Mudichu. It is another story that he gave up “acting” for showmanship later. Or, he might have transformed into the Amitabh Bachchan of Tamil cinema.
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