Anand(Rajnikanth)
is the unbeaten motorcycle champion six years in a row. Winning
the championship brings him into contact with Uma(Jyothi), the daughter
of Thilakavathy(Sukumari), a haughty, rich woman. Uma hates him
for his dark complexion but this naturally soon turns into love(a
forcible kiss is all it takes!). But Thilakavathy has more aces
up her sleeve. She deceives Anand and Uma into thinking that she
agrees to their wedding while secretly planning to get Uma married
off to a boy of her choice. She gets Anand locked up on the day
of the wedding. Anand escapes but is unable to stop the wedding.
The next time they meet, Uma sees Anand happily married to Kalyani(Sarita)
and with a child while she informs him that she too is happily married
with two children.
The movie starts off just like any
other poorly handled Rajnikanth movie. A rather long motorcycle
race that tries but fails to be exciting, a sparkless love story
that starts off with a quarrel before turning romantic and a confrontation
with the haughty, landlady(a la Maappillai) all give a sense of
'been there, seen that'. The romance between Rajni and Jyothi is
weak with no inkling of chemistry between them. Her ploy of dismantling
her car battery to get him to offer her a ride raises a few smiles.
Things start to get better once
Sukumari's plan gets into action. There is genuine suspense as Rajni's
plans for marrying Jyothi and Sukumari's alternative plan for Jyothi
marrying a boy of her choice, proceed in parallel. The resolution
of this is an even bigger surprise as Sukumari wins this battle
by getting Jyothi married as per her wishes while Rajni has to be
a silent onlooker unable to do anything about it. At this point
there is some real suspense about how the rest of the movie is going
to unfold.
But the movie again sinks into predictability
after a little while. Poor handling of the sequences makes the truth
apparent and so happenings on screen seem forced and an unnecessary
postponement of the inevitable. The only suspense is how the truth
is going to be revealed to the players. And there are not many thrills
or surprises in this either. In fact, the sequence of events in
the second half forget to address many of the issues from the first
half. For instance, there is no mention of Rajni's brother 'Thengai'
Srinivasan at all.
Rajni fans must have been
disappointed to see their hero in such an anti-trademark role. He
never fits into the purely romantic mode needed for the hero in
such a movie but the movie doesn't offer him much oppurtunity for
comedy or action either. Jyothi lacks both glamour and acting skills
and naturally, was lost after this movie. Sukumari makes a mark
as the hard-hearted mother. Ilaiyaraja does his turn with the melodious
Vellai Puraa Ondru... and Vaa Vaa Vasanthame....
Puthukavithai Songs
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