Veerame Vaagai Soodum movie review: Few thoughtful ideas buried under several platitudes

Language: Tamil Our world isn’t a fair place for the common man. It’s not equal. The systems are corrupt. Laws are misused. Power is abused, and responsibilities paid off. As common people, we are often told to ignore what is happening around us. We are asked to let it go, run away. But how far can you run? What if, one day, it reaches you? Then, is it flight or fight? It is a relevant question to have, especially in current times. And the film argues that the answer is the title – Veerame Vaagai Soodum (which roughly translates to fortune favours the brave). VVS has three different stories where the common man is failed by the system, and harassed by the powerful. One is the story of Dwaraka (Raveena Ravi) and her family. Her brother Porus (Vishal) is a hot-headed police aspirant, her father is a constable. Even that doesn’t get the system to stop her from being harassed by the local good. Second is Divya (Deepthi) who is blackmailed by her wealthy, influential college-mates in a case of revenge porn. Thirdly, there is Parisuddham (Kumaravel), an activist fighting against a factory that’s polluting his village. This narrative is particularly interesting because Parisuddham believes in not waiting for a saviour. “No god will come and save us, we need to fight this ourselves,” he proclaimed in front of a crowd. And yet, his most used parable is a story of a mosquito and a lion. Calling himself a mosquito, Parisuddham claims that his powerful enemies might be able to squash him. But they won’t be able to stop the lion which will eventually confront them, and annihilate them. So much for fighting one’s own battles. VVS is consistently bogged down by such conundrums. Almost the entire second half of the film has the villain committing several murders to throw Porus off his trail. The reason we get is that, if Porus finds out who he is, the villain’s political aspirations will be ruined. The simpler thing would be to kill Porus himself, but our villain prefers to play a hide-and-seek game and murder multiple people because he believes this is easier to cover. (Whut?!) And, Porus – the seemingly common man who has finally put his foot down to the injustice happening around him – is no ordinary man either. He is hyped up, even by policemen on his hunt. So the premise of a ‘common man’ fighting back feels like a farce. The actual common people in this film, only seem to be waiting for the Hero’s arrival. The women in this film, thankfully, prove to be of some significance to the narrative. But that doesn’t really make their characters all that better. The ideological inconsistencies follow their way here as well. In a moment of bravado, Mythili (Dimple Hayathi) chides her colleague for being too ‘flirty’ with their male superior. “Whether they respect us or leer at us, depends on us,” she says empathically. But this ‘punch dialogue’ doesn’t apply to the other women in this film who are harassed by men, purely because their egos are rejected. There’s also a sequence of Mythili and Porous pretending to have sex, because they want Mythili’s parents to agree for their wedding. But this doesn’t prevent the film from seductively stripping Mythili off her saree before they lie on the bed listening to music on separate headphones. Talk of conundrums. Nevertheless, there is an effort to rationalise everything. I liked how the narrative tried to provide reason to the smaller moments and foreshadows it. But these do not plug in all the loopholes. The film wants to try something new but is not ready to let go of its dated cliches. Just like how it wants its hero to be a common man, but treats him like the garden variety cinema vigilante. The film argues that bravery is enough to win. But it is not enough to be bold; one also needs to be smart. Unfortunately, the film fails on that front. Rating: 2/5 Ashameera Aiyappan is a film journalist who writes about Indian cinema with a focus on South Indian films.