Viduthalai Part 1 Review: Vetri Maaran's Impact Is Reasonably Low, But It's Still A Brutal Film
Vishal Menon's
Updated: April 1st, 2023 at 3:29 PM
Vetri Maaran is the director.

Jayamohan (novel "Thunaivan") and Vetri Maaran are the authors.

Soori, Vijay Sethupathi, Prakash Raj, and Gautham Vasudev Menon star.

The sprawling single-shot beginning stretch of Vetri Maaran's Viduthalai must be seen and re-watched. We've been pushed so close to a train accident that the destruction isn't just in front of us, but all around us. As bodies pile up and severed limbs jolt us into attention, camera movement is disorienting from the ground up to a bridge and into the few surviving compartments of the bombed train. It takes exactly ten minutes.
[4/2, 11:48 AM] ~Sarath._.: Kumaresan's innocence imbues Viduthalai with a power that heightens the realism and eerieness of its surroundings. Although he joins this world as an outsider, with rose-tinted glasses from his upbringing in the police force, he undergoes a baptism by fire as he is able to observe reality from a vantage point. The theme of vantage point recurs not only visually, with drone shots showing how tiny these people appear in the endless forests, but Kumaresan is also required to man the watch tower. At first, this duty appears to be just another punishment, similar to being requested to clean the toilets. However, it is not until the climactic shoot-out that one realises how
[4/2, 11:49 AM] ~Sarath._.: The division of their story into two parts enables the first film to function completely as Kumaresan's loss of innocence, from an obedient government servant to someone forced to question the system to which he was dedicated. It also lends the picture a softness because the story of individuals has a greater effect on us than a conflict as broad as the State versus a rebel group/revolutionaries. Indeed, Kumaresan's love tale with Tamilarasi (Bhavani Sree) serves as a bridge between the two worlds, demonstrating how love is still the most powerful form of diplomacy.

While it remains a complete film in this regard, you can feel it lacking in the kind of impact we've come to expect from movies.
[4/2, 11:49 AM] ~Sarath._.: Even if we ignore individual relationships, the graphic nature of violence lacks the spine-chilling empathy that Vetri was able to elicit for his characters in Visaranai. On paper, the events in Viduthalai are far more visceral, including a stretch in which fingernails are clipped one after the other and a lengthy episode in which a dozen women are stripped naked in an attempt to catch Perumal. However, one questions if the impact is diminished because Vetri chooses to intercut this with a massive action set-piece. And, with the real details due to appear in the sequel, we're expected to take this injustice at face value, with the cops staying the bad guys for the most part, asking us to believe them.