Thunivu Movie Review: There are a couple of episodes in the second half of Thunivu, which, if they were played separately, might make someone mistake the film to be something from the Shankar stable. We get a Shankar-style tragic flashback that explains the motivations of the protagonist, who is on a mission. The other is a crowdpleasing bit in which the antagonists who have been taking advantage of a gullible public are made to answer for their wrongdoings on live television.
But unlike Shankar, H Vinoth doesn’t seem to believe in packaging his film’s core subject into an expansive and grander narrative that first sets up the characters before diving into the plot. This film dives right into the plot in the first few scenes, keeping us in a state of uncertainty as it gives us events that are unfolding in real time and introduces characters along the way. And so, we get straight to the bank robbery that’s the film’s inciting incident.
Gangster Radha (Veera) and his men plot to rob a bank and land up there only to realise that there a mystery man (Ajith Kumar) who is already in the bank, and is only too eager to take over the task. Even as the police, led by the Commissioner (Samuthirakani), is figuring out a way to capture the man, he learns that there is something else sinister afoot. Who is this man and what is he after?
The first thing that strikes you about Thunivu is its pace. The scenes move from one to the next in breakneck speed, and there are times when we wonder if the editor, Vijay Velukutty, is playing them at 1.5x speed. It does take some time to settle down to this, as it does with Ghibran’s wall-to-wall background music as well.
Vinoth keeps packing the screenplay with all the information he must have come across while writing the film. From the way financial scams are done to what happens to the hard-earned money that customers deposit in a bank, he fills us in with a lot of info. Some of this even flows right over our heads given the fast-paced nature of the film.
But what gives the film its highs are the scenes in which Ajith lets loose and does stuff that is more anti-heroic. The actor just takes over the scenes, coming up with an enjoyable over-the-top performance that brings out the whistles from the fans. Manju Warrier gets to perform some action and gets a terrific mass moment in one scene.
However, the other actors, including Samuthirakani, remain more or less functional. The film falters mainly with the performances of the actors who play the antagonists with none of them appearing as a threat to Ajith’s character, not even remotely. Supreme Sundar’s action choreography, too, pushes implausibility quite a bit, especially with many of the gun shoots.
