Nenjil Thunivirunthal movie review: This Sundeep Kishan movie is an average thriller

Nenjil Thunivirunthal has everything that we have come to know from a Suseenthiran film. We have a humour track, a romance track, a few songs, and some action, all the elements needed for a commercial film. But the problem with Nenjil Thunivirunthal is that film doesn’t do much to shake off that sense of familiarity we have.

The plot points in Nenjil Thunivirunthal reminded me about two other recent hits. It talks about the medical industry (Don’t have to tell you which recent movie did that, do I?) and there’s a love track between the best friend Mahesh (Vikranth) and the sister. While the treatment is completely different, comparisons would be inevitable. Soori’s jokes further add to the sense of deja vu. It was fresh when he did it years back. But now we would like to see more from the comedian.

There are points in Nenjil Thunivirunthal that I liked. A simple one would be that it did not have a ‘women are evil’ number, which is generally the outcome when drunk men hear that a man has been ‘wronged’. Here, we get one that knocks some sense into the man. But this isn’t as satisfying as it should be because we don’t get to know the quarrel behind. That’s a recurrent issue that I faced with the film. I liked the fact that the board on the door of Sundeep’s house has the name of his sister (makes sense considering she is a doctor.) But I needed more to convince me of the respect she gets. In fact, we need to see more of her relationship with Mahesh, of the friendship between the two leading guys to convince ourselves of the intensity. The tension or emotion is further diluted by some bad lip sync. It was a smart move to restrict the romance between Kumar (Sundeep) and Janani (Mehreen) to the minimum. Was the romance necessary? No. But at least it did not hinder the screenplay like it did with Spyder. However, the insistence of having a love story in any commercial movie is starting to feel outdated. It is a convention that I hope dies soon so that we get to see love stories that actually matter to the plot. Or get some good women characters that are more than the ‘hero’s love interest’.

The taut running time is a huge strength of the film. While the pre-interval sections ramble, the pace picks up after the intermission making for a fairly engaging movie.

This was first originally published on https://indianexpress.com/. You can find it here.