The Bold Indian
Saitaan/Betaaludu(Tamil/Telugu)
After the humongous success of “Pichaikaran/Bichagadu”, Vijay Antony became a sensation. His next project gathered much hype from every section… common audience to the critics. Following his sentiment of releasing films on Thursday, this film hit the screens on December 1st.
Dinesh(played by Vijay Antony) is an IT professional who gets married to Aishwarya(played by Arundathi Nair). Shortly after his marriage, Dinesh starts behaving strangely. He is haunted by voices asking him to kill Jayalakshmi.
Why does Dinesh behave strangely? Who is Jayalakshmi?….. is revealed subsequently as the plot deepens.
Vijay Antony who is tailor made for peculiar and subtle characterisations once again thrills the audience. His performance is one of the main assets for the film.
Arundathi Nair does a good job.
There is not much noticeable performance by the rest of the crew.
Music by Vijay Antony is below par. Songs are not needed for this film, but the makers have managed to fit in a few. This obstructs the pace of the film. But in the entire album, the haunting “Jayalakshmi” song catches audience attention.
BGM is much more effective than the songs and Vijay Antony scores some brownie points in that aspect.
Cinematography by Pradeep Kalipurayath is good.
Editing by Veera Senthil Raj could have been much more crisper, even the runtime of 2 hours seems lengthy.
Written by Sujatha Rangarajan, Pradeep Krishnamoorthy, Joe D Cruz and Karthik Krishna the script is split between two disjointed stories. The part inspired from Sujatha’s novel “Aah” is the strength of the film. The other disjointed half seems very juvenile and a lift off of many Hollywood films.
Directed by Pradeep Krishnamoorthy, Saitaan has its ups and lows but the problem is after a super hit every actor’s subsequent film is minutely scrutinized and when we do the same, Saitaan loses its steam. The story completely gets derailed in the climax leaving the audience scratching their heads. The first half is a big plus for the film while the second half isn’t that way.
Saitaan/Betaaludu…. a thrilling first half spoiled by a sloppy second half. Watchable but with a few testing moments.
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