In the early minutes of Maaran, Swetha (Smruthi Venkat) prays for her brother to land a job. “My brother is very lazy. He thinks he is a genius, but he is a fool. He can get a job only with your intervention,” she says, looking at the deities on the wall. One could say the same about the film. Maaran wants to be an intelligent, engaging thriller but ends up being lazy and trite.

Maaran has Dhanush playing an investigative journalist. He is particular that he will only write the truth; his words should bring about change. Just like his father Sathyamoorthi, who was also an investigative journalist. Sathyamoorthi was killed because of a scoop he published, But the experience has only made Maaran more determined to take the path his father did. All of this is fine, just the fact that no one in this universe actually speaks like a journalist. When Sathyamoorthi comes with a massive scoop, he is stopped by three colleagues who only warn him of the dangers of publishing the scoop. One colleague even asks why he doesn’t shift to writing gossip. Maybe a close friend or associate can suggest something like this, but for every person in a media organisation to speak like this is plain laughable. The biggest problem with Maaran is that the characters spit information in incongruous chunks, with no concern for authenticity or realism.

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