Vanangaan Movie Review : Bala's template revenge drama fails to make us feel

Vanangaan Movie Synopsis: A deaf and dumb person decides to punish three perverts who tried to take advantage of visually challenged girls. How does this impact his relationship with his loving 'sister'?

Vanangaan Movie Review: Bala's Vanangaan is like a wannabe making a template Bala film, except that it's directed by Bala himself! The film has almost every element that we have seen in a Bala film — the socially awkward protagonist, who is silent but violent and with a heart of gold (Nandha, Pithamagan), the loosu ponnu-ish heroine (Pithamagan), a female character who is innocence personified (Naan Kadavul), villains who try to exploit the socially marginalised (Naan Kadavul, Pithamagan, Thaarai Thappattai), innumerable digs (that are actually funny) at religion, caste and people in power, and blood-soaked action sequences. And is it a Bala film if there isn't a tragic climax? And so, we get one here as well.

The film, set in Kanniyakumari, revolves around Kotti (Arun Vijay), a deaf and dumb person who does odd jobs, and his 'sister' Devi (Ridha), who dotes on him. Kotti is a man who cannot remain quiet when he sees a wrong, and so when he witnesses a trio of lecherous men trying to take advantage of visually challenged girls at the orphanage he works in, he goes after them with a vengeance. But his attitude also troubles Devi, who fears for his safety — given that that law is waiting to catch up with him. How do Kotti's actions affect their loving relationship?

Some portions of Vanangaan (like the melodramatic brother-sister sentiment) and the Bala-isms (there is a laugh every few minutes in the form of some sarcastic remark by one character or the other) work, but most often, Bala's storytelling and the filmmaking seem past their expiry date. To show us Kotti's righteous fury, we get not one but three action blocks that are more or less similar in the way they are choreographed. The romantic track is merely functional while the characters aren't written with depth. Ironically, in a film talking about refraining from looking at disabled bodies with a vulgar mindset, we get an extended scene that's overtly voyeuristic in its depiction of such a crime!

The events of the second half do add some kind of curiosity because of the disabilities of the protagonist, but even here, there's a lot of convenient writing, especially with the characters of a judge and an investigation officer. The beats are only too familiar that there's hardly any surprise or suspense. Everything feels perfunctory, and even Arun Vijay's robust performance cannot elevate the routine nature of the film's proceedings.