Arivazhagan Venkatachalam

Cast

Arun Vijay, Vani Bhojan, Iswarya Menon, N. Azhagamperumal, Vinodhini Vaidyanathan, G. Marimuthu, Tharun Kumar, Vinod Sagar, Sharath Ravi, Master Ramesh, Ajith Koshy, Master Vignesh

What’s The Story

Piracy has long been a threat to the Indian film industry and the Tamil film industry faces its foe in the form of a piracy website called Tamil Rockerz. These anonymous cyber pirates are threatening to release a highly anticipated film featuring a massively popular star. It's up to the cop Rudra to find the lawbreakers and bring them to justice.

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What’s Good

Thrilling Till The Very End

Arivazhagan Venkatachalam has come up with a plot that is very relevant and a problem that has been affecting the Tamil film industry since many years. While the problem is far from over in real life, Venkatachalam’s presentation has managed to bring to light how the notorious gang actually works. Also, it has managed to bring awareness in people about how piracy affects the film industry people who incur heavy loses if their films are leaked online. Bringing forth that awareness in the common people is a big thing, which might deter them from next time watching a pirated version of any movie.

Arun Vijay is the lone one standing in the entire cast. He takes the menace of Tamil Rockerz from an outsider’s perspective and manages to almost bring an end to it. The way he has carried the gritty look and feel of the ACP is praiseworthy.

What’s Bad

Predictable Ending

The writing by Manoj Kumar Kalaivanan and Rajesh Manjunath is very predictable. Every dialogue, which potentially could be a standout moment, is so filled with cliches that you’re cringing thinking about how predictable the outcome is going to be. The menace of piracy isn’t new and it has been happening since the time of CDs and DVDs. However, with Tamil Rockerz what has happened is that films have started leaking online and that too not is jarring cam prints, but in actual HD quality. Therefore, situations, where a producer lost his everything due to Tamil Rockerz, are slightly out of place, as before them, the losses were anyways happening because of CDs and DVDs. What the writers should have brought forth is how this online menace is different from that of the cam prints.

The climax is also very forced. Just in order to leave scope for a second season, director Arivazhagan Venkatachalam has made a mess of the climax. Up until there, the story was having good thrills and punches, but with a bad climax, the entire goodwill built up until then is thrown in the bin. For example, there is a ticking bomb in front of two people. While one of them is fighting the villain, the other person is just standing there doing nothing. Why couldn’t the other person go ahead and press the ‘Abort’ button to stop the detonation? Or is it just the hero’s job to do everything and say ‘Mission Accomplished'? There are many such things in the climax which make this one of the most terrible endings in any show.

The female cop character, played by Vani Bhojan, is supposed to be a cyber forensic expert and not a cop who’s running around behind the criminals. But, as the makers had to bring in a female angle, they decided to make her leave her cyber forensic lab and run around the city with the cop, Arun Vijay. What is more appalling is that she is an officer of the law and should be swooning over her colleague just because he tends to show off some machoism. The budding love angle between Vani Bhojan and Arun Vijay shouldn’t have been shown altogether.

The other supporting characters are almost non-existent. There is another female cop and sidekick of Arun Vijay who are both trying to bring the fun element to the story, but in an 8-episodic show, the makers haven’t been able to bring forth seriousness into their characters that well – after all, they both are cops.

V.J. Sabu Joseph’s editing ensures that the ending of all the episodes is terrible. There is no element of intrigue which is left for the audience to ponder over, and it suddenly just ends without any upheaval. It feels a lot like they made it entirely as a film, and then decided not to edit out portions and let it be released as a series. Therefore, no proper endings to any of the episodes.

Verdict

‘Tamil Rockerz’ is indeed a great plot, to begin with. However, the ending is too forced and makes a mess of the entire story that had been running pretty well till then. While the menace is known and the evils of piracy are going on for decades, the writers should have focused more on how ‘Tamil Rockerz’ are different from the erstwhile cam prints leaked on CDs and DVDs. With its obvious shortcomings, it still has a thrill factor to it up until the climax. Just for that, it is indeed a One-Time Watch. I am going with 2.5 stars.