Paramapadham Vilayattu movie review: Trisha thriller loses plot to predictability, leaving us to a boring fare

Language: Tamil An ex-CM and opposition leader falls sick. Dr Gayatri is assigned to his care. In a few days, he dies, suspiciously. She begins to investigate, which leads her into the dark world of politics. Whether she survives or not forms the rest of this highly predictable film. Paramapadham Vilayattu is conveniently written. For instance, Dr Gayatri’s daughter is introduced in a scene where we hear her backstory — through dialogue — to the latter’s sign language instructor. “My husband left us the moment he found out that my daughter is deaf and mute,” she says as a convenient explanation for being a single mother. What’s surprising is how of all the unexplained logical loopholes in the film, this is the fact they chose to write a scene for! Much of the film is scripted this way. A smartwatch that is conveniently placed as both a telephone and a recording device. Gayatri is both extremely smart and miraculously dumb. So are the villains and their henchmen. People understand sign language easily and almost accurately. We also get a “friend in the media”, who only serves a tangential purpose. All the foreshadowing is inorganic to the story. The lesser said about dialogues, the better. The actors and technicians do little to help. Trisha is painfully one-note, the young girl who plays her daughter demonstrating better emotional range. In all the kidnapping, running and chasing, there is never a strand of hair out of place. I would never understand a woman who doesn’t tie her hair in a bun while getting ready for a fight — then again, this may be just me.

Nandha, who plays the opposition leader’s son, tries his best to perform what little is written for him. Richard (credited as Rishi Rich) is perplexing as the quirky David, one of the villains. The eye drops, sunglasses and the dog are bad enough, but the flashes of darkness and haunting background score every time he appears to make his character inexplicable. Sona plays a politician — the last time she was cast in that role, she was made to speak sexual innuendo to a lecherous audience. Paramapadham Vilayaattu shows her some mercy on that front. The worst part of the film, however, is the introduction of a ‘hero’: A passerby tasked with saving the heroine from danger. We meet him through an item song; he makes awful jokes and has no stake in the film at all. Is he there perhaps because the writers worried that a woman can’t do her own fighting? There is nothing in Paramapadham Vilayattu that we’ve never seen before. The plot and the politics are excruciatingly stale. The scenes are misplaced versions of real-life incidents. The characters are plastic. Overall, the film is barely watchable. Paramapadham Vilayattu is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar. Rating: * Watch the trailer here