144 Review
Director: Manikandan
Cast: Shiva, Ashok Selvan, Munishkanth
ErimalaiKundu and Poomalaikundu are two villages, which always fight over the fish-catching festival. Using their ego battle, the local powerful businessman Rayappan (Madhusudhan Rao) hides truckload of smuggled gold inside a Pillayar statue to escape from cops and income tax officials.The film is supposed to be inspired from writer Sujatha's Vasanthakala Kuttrangal.
Desu(Shiva) is a cursed thief, who is always caught by cops and he has Kalyani (Oviya), a call-girl for company. Together, both Desu and Kalyani loot the jewellery shop of Rayappan. Then there is Madan (Ashok Selvan), a local car racer and driver of Rayappan, who elopes with his master’s daughter (Sruthi ). We have a mute conman (Munishkanth), who knows the big secret of Rayappan's gold. He befriends Desu and Madan for the heist and this forms the premise for CV Kumar's 144.
Just like Guy Ritchie films, ‘144’ too has another interesting character called ‘Feelings’Ravi (Udayabhanu Maheshwaran), who gets high on torturing his enemies with innovative ideas and he is after Rayappan to recover the smuggled gold. As you read the plot, you will realize that ‘144’ has plenty of characters for which the screenplay has to be razor sharp without any confusions and luckily debutante director G.Manikandan has succeeded to a very large extent.
Shiva as a petty thief is in terrific form though he has been repeating his comedy lines and broken English in all recent films. Ashok Selvan is perfect foil to Shiva and he is apt for the role. Oviya seems to be the first choice of film makers when it comes to call-girl roles! Munishkanth manages to evoke few laughs here and there.
RB Gurudev’s cinematography is quite good while art director Gopi Anand deserves a special mention for his brilliant work with the statues and the underground subway. John Leo Paul is the biggest strength of the movie and he saves the shaggy pace to a large extent while Sean Roldon’s background score is catchy.
The bottom-line is, ‘144’ starts off in a promising manner but what doesn’t work so well is the pacing in the second half, as the climax is stretched.