The weight of the character and the air of mystery around it could have been preserved for better payoffs in future films.Continuing with his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Friday accused him of “trying to cheat” the state’s people by just saying Vanakkam (Tamil word for greetings) whereas the Union Government led by him continues to “deceive” the state by not releasing funds even to tackle natural disasters. However, the director could have spared us a few details of Chandra’s game plan as he had already given the audience enough clues. Other members of the cast have also inhabited the screen space with fabulous conviction.Īndrea Jeremiah’s Chandra carries a great importance in the trilogy and is easily the strongest female role in part one. With a thick beard, Dhanush makes us believe that he has reached another stage in his life. He just had to shave his face to play a teenager, and grow a stubble to play a man in his 20s. Not just Anbu, most kids from his neighborhood don’t stand a chance at a better life.Īnbu is a tailor-made role for Dhanush and his physical features make his job easier. The black hole in Anbu’s neighborhood suck him in and eats away the future that he planned for himself. But, Anbu’s gradual progression into the criminal world is more by design than destiny. Anbu (Dhanush), a National-level carrom board player, gets mixed up in the bloody gang war and comes out of the conflict as a seasoned ‘rowdy.’Ī fortune teller predicts that Anbu is destined to become the top dog of Vada Chennai. But he betrays his friends, leaving them baying for his blood. Senthil convinces Guna and Velu to take responsibility for Rajan’s murder by promising to get them out of jail soon. Vada Chennai story begins in 1987 with the murder of Rajan (Ameer) by the hands of his most trusted lieutenants, Guna, Senthil, Velu (Pawan) and Pazhani (Sai Dheena). They know 25 years is the maximum period of time they can reign unchallenged before their might is challenged by a more sharp and skillful player. These gangsters are anything but unrealistic. “For the next 25 years, we can do business here in peace,” Guna (Samuthirakani) tells Senthil (Kishore). Four men, also fully soaked in the blood of their victim, sit around the table and feel overjoyed by imagining a bright future for themselves. In the very first scene, a blood-soaked knife with tiny pieces of human flesh sticking on it is thrown on the table at a bar. Vetrimaaran, who is also the writer, keeps you trapped in the underbelly of the city’s dark corners that is crawling with bloodthirsty criminals. It is how beautifully Vetrimaaran has captured the lifestyle of a place, which is so close and yet so far away from the advancement of modern civilization. It is not the story that stands out in Vada Chennai. But the fact remains, no other filmmaker in India could have captured the true essence of Vada Chennai so precisely. It was probably because he was afraid that he may not do justice to its scale and intensity.
#REVIEW OF VANAKKAM CHENNAI MOVIE SERIES#
The one thing that was evident in the series of interviews that Vetrimaaran gave in the run-up to the film’s release was he was always hesitant to convert the screenplay into a motion picture. For over a decade, the story of this epic gangster drama was just lying in the bundles of screenplays. The story he chanced upon was Vada Chennai. In 2003, director Vetrimaaran stumbled upon a goldmine of content in North Chennai when he was researching for his directorial debut Polladhavan (2007).