Methil Mel Punai

Review By ; Ramesh

Starring : Vijay Vasanth, Vibha Natarajan,
Thambi Ramaiah
Direction : Barani Jayapal
Music : Ganesh Raghavendra
Production : Peenics Creations
‘The most terrifying action thriller,’ reads
the tagline of Mathil Mel Poonai, as
probably a warning for viewers. But
nothing prepares you for what the movie
has in store and you would be grossly
mistaken for thinking that action thrillers
need not be ultra-violent. The amount of
violence and bloodletting in Mathil Mel
Poonai is obnoxiously unsightly and the
director’s conviction at bringing a story
like this to screen – albeit his imagination
– is questionable.
More than the violence in the movie,
Mathil Mel Poonai could provide very bad
inspiration for some children who are
already directionless. It shows school
children plotting and killing their
classmate because he is good at studies,
he gets the pretty girl in the class and
generally because his life is better than
theirs. That is plain appalling. If that’s not
enough, there is more. The children get
arrested and sent to juvenile jail and
there they get assaulted and eventually
sodomized by the warden.
These events leave a deep impact among
them and their anger to avenge their
classmate girl who testified against them
in bringing them to the books for the
murder of their classmate gets vindicated
in their mind. Influenced by these events
and further fuelled by an unquenchable
rage to get even with the girl, they grow
up to be real bad characters. They hunt
down the girl and her newly married
husband in an attempt to butcher her.
And thus, the movie reaches its
penultimate scene where gore fills the
scene and the viewer tires himself out
sick.
While the first half of the movie is replete
with scenes where the children are
shown to be growing up without any
moral values – they smoke cigarette
inspired by their father’s smoking habit,
watch FTV to quench their carnal instincts
and they steal from the school. Thus, you
get the idea as to what is in store but
nothing prepares you for what comes
next. While the first half is that of the
children’s bad-assery, the second turns
brutal with them now having grown up
and chasing the girl who is responsible for
their imprisonment and ruination of their
lives. Not that they would have grown up
to be inspiring youngsters with purposes
in lives.
In this appalling state of affairs, the school
romance in the first half is the only
respite. That, however, is not what the
movie’s purpose is and hence the director
bumps off the boy (pretty brutally) and
dashes your hopes before interval. Vijay
Vasanth is brutal but in a movie without
any purpose, his actions seem futile and
hence only give you a sense of jaw-
dropping astonishment. Vibha Venkat,
who plays the victim, is pretty and can
act.
There is no salvaging aspect in the
movie’s more-than-2-hour of gore and
blood. The songs are forgettable and the
background music more so.
On the whole, the movie is disturbing.
Not that disturbing subjects cannot be
made into movies but this one generally
lacks purpose and ends up being
gratuitously violent and uninspiring. Go at
your ris

RATING 1.5/10