‘Thoonga Nagaram’ - not a bad film (Tamil Movie Review)

Film: “Thoonga Nagaram”; Cast: Vimal, Anjali, Bharani, Gaurav, Nishanth, V.N. Chidambaram, Singam-puli and others; Director: Gaurav; Music Director: Sundar C. Babu; Cinematographer: Ulaganathan; Producer: Dayanidhi Azhagiri and Vivek Rathnavel; Ratings: ** 1/2

Yet another film has come with Madurai as its backdrop. A gang of four youths from nearby villages reach Madurai to find jobs. The unexpected turn of events in their lives after reaching the city is interestingly narrated in “Thoonga Nagaram”.

One of the friends is Kannan (Vimal) who invokes the wrath of a powerful politician in his efforts to save an innocent girl from the latter’s clutches. The politician draws up a master plan to get rid of Kannan with the help of his friends who agree to help him after he threatens to kill their family.

Director Gaurav himself plays one of the youths along with Vimal, Bharani and Nishanth. The film starts with a murder in a rainy night. When you are waiting keenly to see what happens, the director puts a card on screen saying ’six month before’ and takes you back to tell you what happened before the murder.

In Madurai, Kannan meets his childhood buddy Radha (Anjali), working for a local television channel. Their fondness develops into love and they make their families accept their choice.

Here comes a twist. Vimal bashes up a blackmailer who secretly shoots videos of girls changing dresses in trial rooms of a leading textile shop and later blackmails them. One of such girls is known to Vimal.

Vimal beats up the blackmailer, only son of a powerful minister, so badly that he damages his eye. Knowing that the minister will be after him and his friends, the quartet goes underground.

When one of the friends is forcibly turned as a betrayer and joins the minister’s plans to kill Vimal, the screenplay takes a twist and the story culminates in a gripping climax.

Gaurav provides the opening sequences praising Madurai for whatever it possesses. His narration is sleek but the first-half is a bit slow and filled with clichs on Madurai city.

Vimal does a decent job. Anjali, who seems to have put on weight, doesn’t have a big role but does well. Nishanth, Bharani and Gaurav have meaty roles and have performed their respective roles well.

Singampuli’s comedy fails to evoke any laughter, but the portion involving the two old women are rib ticklling. V.N. Chidambaram has performed his role majestically with his expressive face lending him a huge help.

Ulaganathan’s cinematography is excellent. His work is especially good in the climax sequence, which was shot in the night. Babu’s music is good with a couple of melodious numbers but the background music sounds noisy on many occasions.

It would have helped things a lot had Gaurav refrained from using the Tamil word oomai (dumb) quit too often especially in the voice over that comes from director’s perspective.

Overall “Thoonga Nagaram” manages to entertain with some thrill in the second half.