Virattu (2014)

Virattu is a textbook example of what muddled script and bad acting can do to a plot with promise. The film could have been a racy 90-minute thriller on the lines of Hollywood films like Speed and Unstoppable, what with this one too boasting a one-line premise (a heist on a moving train) that would make many of our better commercial film directors slap their forehead and exclaim, 'Now, why didn't I think of that!'.

Sujiv (Sujiv) and Sri (Erica) are partners in crime, extorting money from rich men with a weakness. She wants to turn straight while he enjoys committing crime. Meanwhile, Ammu, who has been brought up in a monastery, wants to go home, and gets a huge sum as cash for working all the years in the place. He believes the world is a nicer place and everyone is good. He comes in contact with the two leads and they get to the train station and encounter the villain, Kalki. Sujiv foils the attempts of his underlings, which infuriates Kalki, and stealing Ammu's cash becomes a matter of saving his reputation for him.

This is quite good as a set-up and all director Kumar had to do was come up with inventive ways to stage the cat-and-mouse game between Sujiv and Kalki. But the scenes we get are hardly interesting, and there is no moment-to-moment vitality that this film needs. What we get, instead, are bland action sequences (even the one on top of the speeding train feels dull), an even blander gangster's moll ( Pragya Jaiswal), pointless songs, even more pointless comedy (where an ingratiating Manobala tries to do a Vadivelu), atrocious line readings, and equally terrible lip sync (quite a number of times we catch the actors mouthing the lines in Telugu!). Even the hasty last-minute twist fails to inject some excitement into the flaccid script.