Vijay Milton, after making a mark with his debut directorial Goli Soda, has tried to explore different genres within the commercial space. In his latest outing Mazhai Pidikkatha Manithan, the director opts to go for a sequel in spirit to Vijay Antony’s hit outing Salim. The story picks up few years from where Salim left off, giving us a scenario where a spy moves into a totally different territory and begins a new life, to be barred out of emotional connections. However, he meets some new people on the way, who make a major impact in his life and turn it around.
Vijay Milton’s earlier films explored real world problems of the characters, and forced them to make stupid decisions and find their way out of it. However, in MPM, the problems in the world of the protagonist feel too artificial, and his writing hardly has any smart turns in its entirety and is happy to stick to very basic formula. The film hardly gives us a moment to cheer or feel for, and and that turns out to be its biggest misfire. There are a lot of avenues where MPM could have explored and made it a solid role for the audiences, but it plays too safe as it feels like Milton was too lazy on the writing table and just wanted to get over with it. The first half of the film establishes the relationships between the main man Vijay Antony and the supporting characters, while the second half is more of a faceoff between the good guys and the bad guys. Vijay Milton, who was able to bring about exciting action sequences on a shoe-string budget in Goli Soda, falters to very trashy fight scenes here.
At an aerial view, it is only Vijay Antony who is the fighting man in the film, as he has a very good performance to deliver, being a measured man who does not even smile much. The film smacks up some mass scenes for the actor, especially the interval block and the climax sequence where his advice means something good. While Dananjayaka is okay, the rest of the cast including Megha Akash, Pruthvi Ambar and the others are about par.
Composer Achu, who has so many good songs in his career, does not even give in one good track here, and that’s one of the film’s biggest minus points.
On the whole, Mazhai Pidikkatha Manithan is a decent thriller which could have been better had the writing been more smarter.
Verdict: A watchable timepass thriller where Vijay Antony has a strong performance to deliver.