Kuala Lumpur, August 5 – ‘Jigharthanda’ is Karthik Suppuraj’s second movie after ‘Pizza’ which became a trend-setter in Kollywood opening the doors for budding film directors. In this second outing Suppuraj joins hands with Sitharth as hero and Letchumy Menon as heroine.
Bobby Simha
For those who don’t know Jigharthanda is the cold drink popular in Madurai and literally means ‘cold-heart’.
Although Jigharthanda excels as a movie and once again proves Suppuraj’s directorial skills, the movie stands out because of the superb performance displayed by Bobby Simha, the psychopath villain of the movie.
Suppuraj’s directorial efforts and screenplay focuses more on Bobby Simha’s character as ‘Assault Sethu’, a notorious and feared gangster leader in Madurai. In the process even the hero Sitharth is dwarfed by Bobby Simha’s antics, who appears throughout the movie depicting multi-faceted emotions.
Tamil film fans would remember Bobby Simha for his memorable performances in earlier movies Soothu Kavvum and Neram. With his performance in Jigharthanda, he is set to go places and puts himself on par with such highly revered acting stars like Prakash Raj and late Raguvaran.
Lengthy story line
The movie is lengthy and centers on Madurai’s underworld in detail and simultaneously shows the pains of a struggling director trying to make a movie.
Sitharth is Karthik Subramaniam, a budding film director who participates in a short film contest. Naren, One of the Judges for the contest in an argument with fellow Judge Nasser, announces that he will make a movie with Sitharth as director. When Sitharth approaches him Naren tells him he wants a story on gangsters and bloodbath similar to Hollywood’s Godfather and Kollywood’s Nayagan and Thalapathy.
Sitharth travels to Madurai, the southern city of Tamil Nadu that ‘never sleeps’ and well known for notorious gang leaders. He finds his college friend Karunakaran (who played as politician son in Soothu Kavvum) in Madurai and seeks his help.
Sitharth then identifies Bobby Simha as the leading gangster ‘Assault Sethu’ in Madurai and follows his movements while trying to find out his past life-story to come up with a screen play. The film then shifts its focus on Sethu and his life and we are then shown the lives of a group of gangsters and how they strategise and plan to retain their hold on the underworld operations, while instilling fear on the public.
At a point, Sitharth is hauled by Bobby Simha suspecting he is a police informant and thereafter the story takes u-turn with hilarious scenes of Bobby Simha being transformed to play the lead character in the film based on his own life, directed by Sitharth.
In between Sitharth also finds his love interest Lakshmi Menon in Madurai. The story tells us how human characters change and transform due to changing circumstances.
The character transformation of Sethu from a notorious gangster to an actor is well executed but the character transformation of the hero Karthik is not convincingly told.
Suppuraj has kept the story line interesting with twists and turns but should have concentrated to remove some scenes which would have made the movie even more interesting and tight. He has attempted to show too many sides of the characters and that makes the movie too long.
Memorable scenes
There are some scenes which shows Suppuraj’s directorial touches. One is when Sethu’s assistants pour ‘Sambar’ to cover the bloodstains when a police Inspector suddenly enters the house.
The murder attempt on Sethu in a toilet is also superbly executed.
Vijay Sethupathi also appears in the movie as himself and plays the character of Sethu in his younger days.
Karunakaran as Sitharth’s friend Ooruni also shows his acting skills and keeps the audience in stitches with his unique dialogue delivery.
Music director Santhosh Narayanan who gave memorable catchy lines in Soothu Kavvum impresses with his background score but fails to produce good songs.
Cinematography is handled by Gavemic U Ary who has attempted to show us the scenes and lives of Madurai in a natural setting.
Jigharthanda is a movie to watch for a new cinematic experience and the acting skills of Bobby Simha.
-Mutharasan
(Watch the trailer for ‘Jigharthanda’)
