While the posters of Vaanam bandied around Anushka dressed glamorously, Bharath posing with a guitar and Simbu in various poses, it gave me the impression that this was a run of the mill masala movie with the usual mass elements such as songs, dances, fights, glamour, etc etc. However, people who actually went to the theatre and watched the movie gave quite decent reviews and asked me to watch it at least once due to the fact that it was quite a different movie, in a nice way.


However, when I did pop in the VCDs into the player I personally didn't expect the movie to be as good as it actually turned out to be. And that's probably why I felt quite refreshed and did quite enjoy the movie as well. Guess having low expectations and having them belied works well in some cases. 


An ensemble cast of Simbu, Bharath, Anushka, Prakash Raj and Saranya make the most of the limited screen time given to each of them. Five different stories of each of these characters, each of them making up a nice short film by itself, each one of them promising to be reasonably good and meaningful by itself and how they all end up converging at the climax makes for an interesting premise.


With movies like these where there is more than one single primary story line, it is quite a tricky job tying up all the loose ends and making a coherent movie. Krish more than manages to do this, and in the process ended up making a nice movie. The one single theme through most of the movie revolves around the difficult circumstances for each one of these characters. 


While Simbu and Saranya are struggling for some money, Prakash Raj is looking for his brother who disappeared three years ago. Anushka wants to get away from the clutches of her villainous pimp, and Bharath is in the process of rediscovering himself. While each one of these story lines pull their weight in the movie, the themes surrounding Prakash Raj and Saranya can probably be made into individual movies by themselves. And kudos to the director Krish and the respective actors that they bring a lot of credibility to these roles with their prowess. 


All in all Vaanam probably was the most under-rated, under-hyped and good movies to hit Tamil movie theatres in a while. A must watch movie for all movie lovers.


Related links
Wikipedia link to the movie


Trailer



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While the posters of Vaanam bandied around Anushka dressed glamorously, Bharath posing with a guitar and Simbu in various poses, it gave me the impression that this was a run of the mill masala movie with the usual mass elements such as songs, dances, fights, glamour, etc etc. However, people who actually went to the theatre and watched the movie gave quite decent reviews and asked me to watch it at least once due to the fact that it was quite a different movie, in a nice way.
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