Mahabalipuram Movie Review
Director: Dan Sandy
Cast: Vinayak, Jayakumar, Karunakaran, RJ Ramesh, Karthik, Angana
Music: K
Producer: Vinayak
Sex scandals and abuses have turned out to be a life threatening issue in India and many teenage girls have lost their lives due to the brutal business mind of certain people in the society. Debut director Don Sandy's Mahabalipuram has tried to portray the cruel happening with lots of twists in the last thirty minutes of movie which is definitely hard hitting. Yes, the message has been clearly told but as a film, Mahabalipuram doesn't
The film opens in a prison where Vinayak (Panja) gets life-sentenced. Cut to the flashback, Sammy (Karthik), Sathish (Vetri), Kuppan(RJ Ramesh) and Karunakaran are Panja's close friends and they grew up in the tourist spot of Mahabalipuram. At one point of time, Sathish gets married to his long time girlfriend Sangeetha (Angana), life goes happily until all the boozed friends see a scandal video of Angana with a stranger which causes the death of the couple. Now such situation comes again and turns Panja's life upside down, does he finds the culprit behind the brutal sex crime? As the director has surprised us with the last thirty minutes of the movie, we are not going to reveal the suspense here.
The problem with Mahabalipuram is that the director finds it really difficult to portray friendship and romance in a believable manner, most of the time he has tried to convey it through dramatically written dialogues which is exactly opposite to the progressive new age Tamil cinema. Also, there is not even a single interesting moment in the first half as the director reserves everything to be revealed in the second half.
Performance wise, Vinayak has done a decent job and the scene where he cries in the graveyard climax is noteworthy. The rest of the actors including Jayakumar, Karunakaran, RJ Ramesh and Karthik are just okay.
Technically, music composer K has given some hummable numbers and the background score for the last thirty minutes is pulsating. Overall, Mahabalipuram is yet another film with a message with too many hiccups.
