Film Review 'Kolaigaran': Vijay Antony and Arjun shine in this engrossing screenplay

Vijay Antony, known for his unique script choices, has collaborated with his classmate and debutant Andrew Louis this time for a thriller. The title Kolaigaran raised a few eyebrows among movie buffs. But is the film intriguing enough?

The film opens with a woman’s murder inside a house. In the next scene, a man, who claims to be a serial killer named Prabhakaran (Vijay Antony) surrenders to the police and admits to committing a few murders which the police have been trying to crack. The story travels to the past where the cops find a young man’s dead body in a Corporation playground in Vyasarpadi, wonderfully captured in an aerial shot by Mukesh. Apart from the shot is the colour tone and Simon’s theme music lifts the 110-minute and three second-film from the start. From then on, Arjun takes over the film as Karthikeyan IPS and the story is narrated from his perspective. The actor has performed with ease and is tailor-made for the character right from the beginning. Vijay Antony in the first half as a stalker and a serial killer impresses us.

There are several angles to Prabhakaran, which makes the second half interesting. Kolaigaran is a whodunit and isn’t a run-on-the-mill cat and mouse game between a police man and a killer. However, Ashima Nariwal as Dharini though doesn’t have much to do in the first half, grows along with the story and has put up a decent performance in her Tamil debut. Several subplots and suspense build the hype for the second half. As the film heads towards the climax, suspense starts unfolding one after the other. Andrew hasn’t compromised in his writing and has connected every single dot — from the first scene to the subplots — even for the smallest of the characters leave a huge impact on screen. The script that is written in non-linear format yet has commercial elements in right places. A rapid second half might have made the first half look a little slow. A couple of songs also drag the pace a bit. Else, a crisp and tightly-packed Kolaigaran is a winner.