Credit: Special Arrangement
There’s a moment in Mareesan where Vadivelu’s character Velayudham tells Fahadh Faasil’s Dhaya to take the village route as it is too hot on the highway. And so they take their RX100 bike through a village. There is a sudden relief which is also felt by the audience. The takeaway is that there was so much potential in the movie that simply went unused.
Mareesan is a road movie about an Alzheimer’s patient who is rescued from captivity by a small-time thief, whose true motive is to extort money from the old man. That’s the first half of the movie; a decently executed slow-burn that leads up to a breathtaking twist. However, the second half of the film jumps into a trope-mode. It opens a Pandora’s box of clichés and predictable plots. The movie is just a ragebait that lacks nuance and fails to show respect towards the actual victims the film discusses.
Speaking of the positives, Mareesan is a movie that left me with a great deal of awe for Vadivelu as an actor. Fahadh too shines in a role he has already done too many times. The duo share a great onscreen chemistry, breathtakingly pure. Moreover, Vadivelu’s vocals in many of the emotional sequences of the movie take the emotional connection with the scene up a notch.
Kailaiselva’s cinematography is raw and makes the characters relatable as they travel from village to village on a two-stroke bike. Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music and the background score are both jarring and feels authentic in different intervals.