Maaran

When you watch Maaran, the new Karthick Naren film starring Dhanush as the title character, the disappointment is mainly due to this naive view of a young filmmaker about journalism. The idea itself feels heavily cliched, and Karthick seems to have no interest in creating characters with flesh and blood. At one point, the pace with which the movie was skipping through events made me think there would be a more extensive agenda that would eat up the rest of the runtime. But to my disappointment, this skipping-through process just went on till the end, making me wonder who saw potential in this script.

Mathimaaran, a young investigative journalist, is our title character. He is this honest journalist who doesn’t think twice before publishing the truth. So getting a job was difficult for him. But eventually, he gets recruited by a media house when he impresses them with “Twitter” journalism. One song later, Maaran is a superstar journalist, and politicians hate him. The movie is basically about one story Maaran covered, which caused major issues to the political career of a politician named Pazhani. How that news changes Maaran’s life is what we see in this film.

In the beginning portion of the movie, when Maaran is getting beaten up by Police, Malavika Mohanan’s Thara comes for his rescue. She angrily tells the police officer that she will sue him. As a viewer, I was curious about what caused that kind of anger. But then we have this backstory of Maaran where Thara is absolutely irrelevant. The Twitter scene that establishes Maaran as a journalist who wants to spread positivity is the cue to throw away your expectations about the film. The rise of Maaran as a superstar journalist is also depicted in the tackiest way possible.

A journalist messes with a politician, and the politician decides to take revenge on the journalist. This unexciting thread is the soul of Maaran, and I think even Karthick Naren knows it’s not enough. But instead of building something that would blend in with the narrative, he goes formulaic about his script. It seems like the Vivasayi Pasam has ended in Tamil cinema, and it’s the season of Thangachi Pasam. Here also, we have that in abundance. The mandatory fight sequences for heroics are there, and they all stood out like an unnecessary compromise. Maaran’s sister’s photoshoot and the flight with Thara etc., simply expose the cluelessness of the movie’s writing department.

There is pretty much nothing there for Dhanush to do here. The severely underdeveloped character just doesn’t offer any challenge to him. It never gives the viewer a chance to root or cheer for that character. Even in sloppy potboilers, the heroines have some space in the story. But Malavika Mohanan was absolutely unessential to this film. Aadukalam Naren and Smruthi Venkat at least got important characters. Soorarai Pottru fame Krishnankumar plays the role of a police officer here. Samuthirakani and Ameer are playing characters with the negative shade. Like every other character in the film, those characters were also poorly written.

Maaran is a movie that is frequently trying to stay in the mediocre zone by either adding a song, a fight, a comedy scene, or a bizarre-looking plot twist. The writing credit of the movie has almost four names, and, astonishingly, they thought this particular script had the potential to be entertaining or engaging.