In the role of a lifetime, Soori as Kumaresan brims with joy and innocence as filmmaker Vetri Maaran's sociopolitical satire increases in his most recent movie.
A review of director Vetri Maaran's filmography reveals a recurring theme in all of his productions: they are all about regular folks, outcasts attempting to make a living, who unknowingly become sucked into a realm of chaos from which they must escape unharmed. They have all been successful both critically and commercially, despite the fact that this may appear oversimplified; this winning run seems to have maintained with Viduthalai Part 1. It's also clear from his most recent work, which is also his most politically charged story yet, how his socio-political commentary has intensified.
In Vetri Maaran's movies, the police are typically made up of obedient individuals who have become accustomed to obeying orders after years of training or cunning power brokers. In contrast to his previous film, Visaranai, which is pointless to ignore while watching or discussing Viduthalai, which introduced us to Muthuvel, a diligent man, here we meet a wide range of police officers; in fact, it would have been appropriate to call this movie 50 Shades of Khaki.
Instead of Muthuvel, we now have Kumaresan (Soori), a new hire at a police camp located in a village surrounded by dense forests close to the boundary between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. As our point-of-view character, Kumaresan learns about the Makkal Padai movement led by Perumal nicknamed Vaathiyaar as well as the customs of the constables (Vijay Sethupathi). A mining firm, supported by the government in the name of the growth of the state, intends to destroy the nature surrounding the hamlet under the guise of giving job to thousands of downtrodden people. Revolutionaries who profess to speak all languages, including violence, are on one side, while the system-led police force, which refers to the separatist group as a terrorist organisation, is on the other.
Viduthalai doesn't truly discuss right and wrong despite discussing government concerns, the politics behind them, and the social issues related to them. Instead, it focuses on the battle between the army and the group as well as the struggles of Kumaresan, who must make the difficult choice to compromise his morality and innocence in order to advance in his career and win Tamizharasi's love (Bhavani Sre). The latter sees Kumaresan's adventures greeted with slap after slap of reality, while the former leads to torture in detention and revenge from the revolutionaries (which seems to have happened for years already). As a character from a video game dropped into a new universe, he must explore the unknown and learn through comprehending .
