With 'Veera Sivaji', young and promising hero Vikram Prabhu has teamed up with director Ganesh Vinayak who made a decent debut with ‘Thagaraaru’ for .Lets see whether the film will give the much needed break for its stakeholders.
Sivaji (Vikram Prabhu) is a call-taxi driver in Pondicherry. He does not have any relations except his foster sister (Vinodhini) and foster niece Yazhini. He falls in love at first sight with Anjali (Shamlee) who accidentally dashes his car with her two-wheeler.
Yazhini suffers from a severe brain disease and a surgery costing Rs.25 lakhs is imminent to save her. Sivaji has to arrange the funds. In his pursuit for money he is mislead to a fraudulent gang lead by John Vijay which involves in various forms of bogus schemes to cheat innocent people and usurp their money. Sivaji loses Rs.5 lakhs that he has acquired by selling his car, to this gang.
After knowing that he has been cheated Sivaji decides to take on the gang and bring them to book using his brain and brawn.
What happened next forms the rest.
‘Veera Sivaji’ could have been an interesting thriller in the backdrop of money crimes. Sadly it fails to utilise its potential with more screen time for uninspiring love and sentiment sequences and comedy that works in parts
The establishment of characters takes a lion’s share of the first half. The hero and villain’s gang come into contact only after a good 40 minutes of the film. The proceedings after that point till the interval offers scope for attentive watching. The tricks used by the hero to trace down the villain are intelligently written and well executed. The interval comes with a twist and we put on our seat-belts for a entertaining and engaging ride.
But within 20 minutes into the second half we start yearning for any form of collision between the hero and villain which happens only in the pre-climax sequence when we are already exhausted.
The love portion between the lead actors has nothing new or interesting to cherish. Comedy by Yogi Babu and Robo Shankar works out to an extent as the duo- inspired by the Ramesh-Suresh characters of a popular Television commercial- manage to raise guffaws in regular intervals.
The poor placement of songs adds more pain to the tiresome narration. Especially the ‘Soppana Sundari’ song that has the hero dancing with a item girl amid his struggles to save a dear one’s life is something seriously problematic.
Vikram Prabhu gives his best for the character. He fits well in action sequences and gives a decent performance in emotional scenes. Shamlee gets a forgettable debut as a heroine in Tamil.Her lip sync is poor and the scenes involving her do no help her either. John Vijay is apt for the clever and menacing villain role while Naan Kadavul Rajendran as his assistant provides is adequate as a comic villain.
D.Imman’s songs do not add any value to the film while re-recording gives the much needed adrenaline push for the action sequences. M.Sukumar’s cinematography is just okay
Verdict : A few Interesting hero-villain chase sequences and comedy tracks working in parts save ‘Veera Sivaji’ from becoming a disaster.
