‘Raayan’ movie review: Dhanush’s bloody battle just doesn’t add much value

Drops of water run down the cheeks of the newborn baby girl lying in the priest’s lap, while her gaunt elder brother pours water from head to toe and names her ‘Durga.’ In a few days she will watch him bleed, be forced to give up the boy inside her, be smeared with sin from which he will never be able to purify himself, and live a life amid fire and death.

RayaanActor-director Dhanush’s second directorial venture begins with this well-thought-out scene that sets the right mood. Composer AR Rahman’s voice tugs at your heartstrings as you watch Kathavarayan aka Ryan, his two younger brothers and a younger sister flee their town and reach Madras. With the help of Sekar (Selvaraghavan), they find shelter and the means to survive. Is Sekar just a gentle-hearted stranger, or did he see something in Ryan’s eyes and wish he was by his side? We’re never told, but our guess might be the latter.

In the present day, while shouldering fatherly responsibilities, Ryan (Dhanush) runs a fast-food shop to help Manickavel Ryan (Kalidas Jayaram) with his college studies and Durga (Dushara Vijayan) get married soon. Muthuvel Ryan (Sundeep Kishan) however is a short-tempered, impulsive, alcoholic who gets into petty fights and has to wait for his brother’s help. Even his girlfriend Meghla (Aparna Balamurali) has to muster up the energy to put up with his behavior or drink her fill.

In any other locality, Muthu would have been just another dead body. A catchy song sequence in which he drinks, dances and has fun with Megala shows what kind of life he would have lived if he didn’t live in a place where there is a war going on between two rival gangs; one led by Dorai (Saravanan) and the other by Sethuraman (SJ Suryah). At the centre of this world is a vortex of murder, adultery, animosity, politics and power, a quagmire that Ryan has repeatedly warned them to avoid getting caught in. Complicating matters further is a cop (Prakash Raj) who drives a wedge between these gangs for personal vengeance.

Establishing a balanced setting with effective treatment, the filmmaker in Dhanush promises to turn a simple story into something more. For instance, his own introduction shot is not the ‘mass cinema’ entry you would expect, but a wide shot of him cooking Chinese food. Dhanush has enveloped his character in a lot of mystery, his ominous, brooding personality painting an opaque image of him behind those calm eyes.

But it’s very disappointing that this is all we get to know about him in the film, and the writing of his character contributes to this Rayaan failing to deliver on all its promises, choosing the beaten path and ending in a disappointing manner. To understand how this happens, take for example his cult classic, pudupettaiDirected by Selvaraghavan; Kokki Kumar’s brilliant character arc shows him as a powerless man who fights a goliath who gives him a day’s notice to survive. Meanwhile, a small mistake takes down Anbu, Vetri Maaran’s Vada ChennaiGetting caught up in a gang war. Ryan too is dragged into the gutter against his will, but here he is on the offensive, bringing death at the feet of his enemies, with no time limits or deals to stop him. This is a character who faces no major obstacles, and having such an indestructible character at the centre leaves the screenplay with very few options to do anything remarkable.

Dhanush has adopted a unique style while writing the lead characters. Ramayana Way to incorporate some metaphors; Rayaan is designed after Ravana, Muthuvel after Kumbhakarna and Manickavel after Vibhishana. Durga is Shurpanakha, who the film says has every right to be ‘Durga’. Such characterisations sound interesting on paper, but barring Rayaan, the other characters become mere puppets of the plot, their voices suppressed. SJ Suryah is criminally underutilised, and his character becomes a cliché with no merit to back up his villainy.

SJ Suryah in a scene from ‘Rayaan’ | Photo Courtesy: Special Arrangement

The second half hardly has any room for the drama that we saw in the first, and many of the actions of the other main characters are unjustified. Of course, in such a set-up, a main character has to go through a tragedy to trigger a reaction, but Dhanush could have done better than using typical Tamil cinema cliches here.

However, even during the monotonous events in the second half – which features one bloody murder after another – AR Rahman’s brilliant background music and Om Prakash’s cinematography keep you captivated. The DOP has attempted to redefine the style we have become accustomed to with the way he has lit his frames. Opting for neon and warm lighting, he has highlighted the characters as powerless human beings who are unaware of the darkness that is consuming them.

With the number of gangster dramas on the rise in the last decade, and movies being splattered with gore to follow the trend, you expect some novelty from people like Dhanush. RayaanHowever, neither of them meet the actor’s standards Asuran Neither the director Pa Paandi,

‘Raayan’ is currently running in cinemas