The crispness, the crackle is lost when you filter certain Hollywood genres through Tamil-film sensibilities. Sathuranga Vettai is filled with talk. There are some funny, clever lines, like the one that goes “Kuttra unarchi illaama pannradhu edhuvume thappu illai.” (“If you don’t feel guilty while doing something, then it isn’t wrong.”) But a lot of the time, the characters seem to be speaking to us, the audience — they keep feeding us existentialist punch lines. Then there’s all the sentiment. Changes of heart occur too conveniently and by the time we see a character turn into a labourer, it’s downright laughable. We need to be eased into these developments, not pushed into them.
Tamil