Bairavaa movie review: Vijay saves inadequately etched film

Director: Bharathan

Cast: Ilayathalapathy Vijay, Keerthy Suresh, Papri Ghosh, Daniel Balaji

Bairavaa (Vijay) is a collecting agent at a private bank whose job is to recover money from defaulters. He shares his room with his sidekick (Satish). Bairavaa meets Malarvizhi (Keerthy Suresh) who had come from Tirunelveli to Chennai for her friend's wedding and the inevitable happens. Yes, its love at first sight for him. After a dream duet song and Bairavaa saving Malar from hooligans at the Koyambedu bus terminal, the former realizes that all is not well with her. She narrates her flashback to Bairavaa.

Malarvizhi is a medical student at a private medical college at Kallidai Kuruchi, which is run by a notorious gangster PK (Jagapathi Babu). Once a small time butcher, he has now risen to a respectable' Kalvi Vallal (Educationist and philanthropist) and commands a significant amount of power. PK is aided by a ruthless thug Kottai Veeran (Daniel Balaji). Despite charging hefty fees, when the students of the college finds out that PK doesn't adhere to any basic norms in the college, they raise a complaint to the medical council.

A team of officials arrive at the college to find out the irregularities, but PK manages to bargain by offering a girl of their choice to them to brush off their findings under the carpet. Malar's friend is taken away from the college the same night, but she is found dead in the morning. Unable to digest her friend's death, Malar with the help of her dad who is a policeman raises her voice against PK.

All hell breaks loose and the latter gets killed. Post interval, the story shifts to Tirunelveli and how single-handedly (!) Bairavaa using his brain and brawn brings PK's illegal ways to books and punishes him.

As expected the film has all mass masala elements like super intro song, loads of action, humor, romance (sans glam quotient), bit of catchy punch lines, sentiment, drama and selflessness that are associated with a typical Vijay film.

It is Vijay's extraordinary screen presence and mass appeal, which helps to elevate the film to a great extent, in an otherwise inadequately etched script and unexciting presentation. Keerthy Suresh looks pretty and does what is expected out of her. Jagapathy Babu is a clich©d villain.

All other characters in the film are merely functional. A major letdown is Santhosh Narayanan's music, except the theme number Varlaam Varlaam Bairavaa. The first half is good while post interval, it moves in a predictable manner. With such big budget and a star like Vijay, Bharathan could have packaged the film in a better fashion.