Thaana Serndha Koottam is supposedly the Tamil adaptation of the 2013 Hindi Film Special 26 with a few changes and additional side spice adding stories. Suriya plays Inyan who is the center of the story and is a typical commercial hero who can dance, fight, romance, deliver punch dialogs and even pull off comic sequences with ease. Keerthi Suresh has virtually no part to play except in a couple of comic scenes and dance in more than a few plot-interrupting songs.
The cast includes comic stalwart veterans like Thambi Ramayya, Senthil, yogi babu, Satyan, RJ Balaji who have very little scope to even fully form their character but the most tragic waste is Brahmanadam who is given a screen space of about 30 seconds. Everything is rushed and easily out of focus as if everyone including the script is working in their spare time to accommodate some other main project. Special mention of the veteran actor Karthik who plays an eccentric yet brilliant investigative officer. He plays his role with surprising vigor and dawns the character to a T.
Lets take a moment here for Suriya. Suriya has time and again set high expectations over the years with Nandha, Kaakha Kaakha, Pitamaghan, Gajini and a few others but last couple of years things are not really working out or him with the commercial hero approach, ok…he tried and kudos for that but as intelligent viewers we are unable to take in another 24 or Mass or Singham even. We demand the mind-blowing actor that Suriya actually is to be back – in the remake direction if necessary.
Vignesh Shivan has directed and also scripted the movie. Previously he has given us hits like VIP and Naanum rowdydhaan. The entire experience is 2 Hr and 18 min and editing is non-existent by Sreekar Prasad, there are so many slack moments that it could have been easily wrapped up under 2 hours.
The background score is off track, interrupting and sometimes even irritating. The dialogs sometime even are hard to hear because of the disturbing eeriness. Anirudh Ravichandran is clearly distracted and/or disinterested and the songs and too long and meaningless to the narrative.
In conclusion – Watch Special 26 instead. With subtitles if language is a barrier.
MondayVerdict 