Director: Mari Selvaraj

Maamannan, a political thriller drama, is stuck between a commercial film and a social justice film. This movie falls under usual political drama but with the touch and sensibility of Mari Selvaraj. From the maker of Pariyerum Perumaal and Karnan, this movie falls a bit short. 

The film is set in Salem, following the life of Maamannan (Vadivelu) and Rathnavel (Fahadh  Fassil), where the latter belongs to a dominating community and a politician and the titular character belong to an oppressed community from the same political party. Udhaynidhi Stalin (Athiveeran) son of the Maamannan was full of anger, agony and searching for unsolved answers throughout the movie. Udhay portrayed the character beautifully.

The role of female lead, Keerthy (Leela) was shown as an angry college student who fights for justice only when she was introduced, in the later scenes those were handed out to Veeran and she was mostly on the side.
Interval block brought the whole first half together but the second half fell quite short and struggled to carry the story and was dragged a bit.

Coming to ideologies, it does bring justice to the maker’s idea of Equality and Unity but doesn’t fulfill his previous film’s bars.

A.R. Rahman’s music is the element that takes the movie to its peak. The music perfectly conveyed its emotion correlating with the acting. Camera work and editing are done perfectly which sometimes feels a bit overboard. But they captured the essence of the past storyline perfectly.  Raveena Ravi, Lal and Vijaykumar were shown on the screen but those characters failed to make a mark as there was no importance to their characters. 

To all the movie decoders and film studies students, the movie has a lot to offer.

In short, it’s a Vadivelu movie. Others were supporting his character perfectly but the screenplay could have been better.

Rating: 3.5/ 5

Verdict: The movie makes you think about your society thus the ideology is conveyed with Mari Selvaraj’s touch as usual.