Evano Oruvan - Review

Evano Oruvan captures your attention from the very first frame till the very end – with some power-packed performance by Madhavan and Sangeetha.

At the outset it may look like a usual story – where the protagonist takes into violence to cleanse the system. But if you get into the detail you will find that it’s not in the league of films like Gentleman, Anniyan or Ramana. That is the plus and minus of Evano Oruvan from a commercial success point of view. Most people might tend to put this into the Anniyan kind of movies and outright reject it. And there can other section of crowd that may understand that it deals with the emotional side of an individual and appreciate the movie and even call it a classic. And "yours truly" certainly belongs to the latter crowd.

The movie is about an individual (or should I call it “You”) who leads a mechanical life and is frustrated about the system – where anything and everything is tied to money. Though all of us would have undergone one such humiliation or frustration – we don’t end up taking it too personally – rather try to put up with the system and keep moving forward with some “hope”. Sridhar Vasudevan is also one such individual – but the continuous push from the system makes him “out-of-mind” – where in from the state of having just unanswered questions in mind – he moves to a state where he vents out his anger. Imagine if all of us get into such a state of mind!!! As the movie progresses – you too get engrossed into the emotional journey of Sridhar Vasudevan. In specific watch out for the emotional out burst of Sridhar Vasudevan in the middle of the night – where he talks about the greediness and why majority of the people are willing to go against the rulebook – or rather why very few individuals tend to go by the rulebook – there by alienated from the society and seen as jokers. Nishikanth Kamath (Director) made a smart move by having the police officer (Seeman) character as general public’s conscience – by making him go through the pain & agony of Sridhar Vasudevan. What makes this movie a classic is that by the end of the movie the police officer kills Sridhar Vasudevan in an encounter attack and then comes to know that the pistol carried by Sridhar Vasudevan didn’t even have a single bullet – thereby making a strong statement that society will always try to curb the ones who asks fundamental questions and fight for ones fundamental right – even though he/she didn’t intend to do anything wrong!!!!

Madhavan as Sridhar Vasudevan has given a fantastic performance and he is surely one of the actors who could make you cry. Watch out the scene where Sridhar Vasudevan calls his wife (Sangeetha as Vatsala). And you have to give it to Sangeetha – all I could say is Tamil cinema has missed out to capitalize on her talents. If she was a revelation in Pitha magan – she has now proved that it’s not a flash in the pan.

Seeman as the police officer is not too convincing. There are far more actors who could have done a great job in this role.

And the key thing to mention here are the dialogues. It’s mind-blowing and I was really surprised to see Madhavan has the dialogue writer – with supervision from Seeman. It’s simple yet powerful.

Nishikanth Kamath is the director of the movie – who did Dombilivi Fast (the original) in Marathi. A special thanks to him – for providing one of the best movies in Tamil Cinema. And hats off for his guts to make a movie without even a single song or comedy track or any other masala items – and yet making it very short and racy.

Evano Oruvan will certainly be a milestone in Tamil cinema and let’s give a warm welcome to Madhavan for getting into the league where we have the likes of Balachandar, Kamal Hassan, Prakash Raj, Bala, Radha Mohan, Ram (Katrathu Tamizh).