Movie review 'Oru Naal Iravil': A fairly engrossing fare

 

For his debut directorial venture Oru Naal Iravil, ace Editor Antony has chosen to remake the much-acclaimed Malayalam flick Shutter and has stuck to the original faithfully and has succeeded to a large extent.

 

Shekar (Sathyaraj) is an NRI working in Singapore comes to Chennai for a brief vacation. He always travels in Soori’s (Varun) auto.  Soori does all errand jobs to Shekar hoping that the latter would get him a visa to Singapore. Shekar owns two shops adjacent to his house where one room is vacant and he uses it to hangout with his friends who booze and chat everyday.  He wants to forcefully marry his teenaged daughter Varsha, just because she was seen behind a boy on a bike. This leads to confusion at home. Having fixed his daughter’s wedding, Shekar wants to drink that night and while traveling in Soori’s auto to get more liquor, he sees a roadside prostitute (Anu Mol) and picks her up, Unable to find a place, he decides to spend the night at his room. Soori locks then inside and promises to return with food after sometime. Things go awry as Soori gets arrested for drunken driving and lands up in a police station. Then there’s this Sethu Bharathi(Yuhi Sethu) a struggling director who looses his script in an auto which eventually is locked inside the store. The series of events that takes place while he is caged in a room for one night, which makes Shekar, realize his mistakes of succumbing to petty and improbable wishes in life.

 

The biggest plus of Oru Naal Iravil is its apt casting by Antony! Sathyaraj shines as the middle-aged man caught in a predicament, albeit going slightly over the top at few places. Anu Mol gives a natural performance be it her body language, facial expression or dialogue delivery.  Yugi Sethu who has also written the dialogues of the movie, brings alive character of a once admired and now struggling filmmaker.  Varun does his part well.  MS Prabhu cinematography and Navin’s music go well with the mood of the film.  Though the pace is slow initially, it catches momentum and keeps you engaged for most part of it.  Kudos to Antony for packaging it without commercial compromises yet delivering a fairly engrossing fare!