Director: Gautham Vasudev Menon
Cast: Silambarasan (STR), Siddhi Idnani
Vendhu Thanindhathu kaadu or VTK is the third collaboration between STR and director Gautham Vasudev Menon. VTK is also probably GVM’s most unorthodox film to date as it skips most of the idiosyncrasies we associate with his oeuvre. The protagonist in this film (Muthu played by STR) for starters is someone with amoral shades, a detour from GVM’s squad of upright heroes. The romantic track is also one of the weakest I’ve seen in a GVM film but more on that later.
VTK is essentially a gangster film and follows the tried and tested template of an underdog who rises through the mafia ranks. Muthu, who used to work menial jobs in a rural part of Tamil Nadu, shifts to Mumbai in search of greener pastures. He lands employment at a ‘Parotta’ restaurant but quickly realizes there’s more cooking behind the scenes there than just the south Indian delicacy. He finds himself inadvertently recruited into a local gang and experiences violent confrontations for the first time in his life. His immediate reaction is to call it quits but circumstances keep him engaged with the gang’s activities. The rest of the film is about Muthu’s exploits in Mumbai as he grapples with both peril and power.
VTK is a slow burn. It was marketed as the first part of a gangster series and hence could be construed as an origins story. Even then, I felt the screenplay took too long to establish the world and the conflicts Muthu was pitted against. I also had problems with Muthu’s character sketch itself. We are told he is a B Sc graduate, but there’s not a single scene where he even tries looking for a ‘normal’ job at a hub like Mumbai, given how dissatisfied he is at the Parotta joint. If the intention was to show how he was attracted naturally to the world of crime, this was not brought out well enough (a stray dialogue that he was destined to be a killer as per his horoscope doesn’t really do the job).
The film’s pace picks up in the second half and it’s a fairly gripping watch from then on. The action choreography is commendable and the character of the assassin Rawther (played by Jaffer Sadiq of Vikram fame) is a key highlight. I especially liked the sequence where Muthu and his boss are set up against each other by a scheming Rawther who uses Muthu’s wife Paavai (Siddhi Idnani) as bait.
This also brings me to Paavai’s character and the romantic track. After 20 years in the industry, GVM still sits on the throne as the unopposed king of writing romantic scenes. VTK is a major let down in this regard though. The scenes between Muthu and Paavai feel contrived and we never really experience the magic we’ve come to expect from GVM. AR Rahman’s score, that makes generous use of riffs from the now trending ‘Kaalathukkum Nee Venum’ and ‘Marakkuma Nenjam’ songs, only barely helps the cause.
Silambarasan is in his element throughout and shoulders the burden of a shallow script as much as he can. His looks seem to have been styled taking inspiration from famous cinematic dons, right from Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone to Rajni’s Baasha. His screen presence is magnetic and he continues his good personal run from his last blockbuster Maanaadu.
Ultimately VTK is a film that’s lively in parts and is watchable for STR’s performance and the engrossing second half. The run time was too long and there could have been some obvious cuts to make the screenplay slicker. I didn’t really see the point of the lengthy epilogue in the end for instance. The next part when it comes out will hopefully be a crispier affair.
Overall rating: 2/5
