Virunnu Review | The Only Thing Fresh About This Fossil of a Film Is the New Anti-tobacco Ad

In the first half of the new Kannan Thamarakkulam movie  Virunnu, we get to see this Nanmamaram hero who is taking RCC patients for free in his autorickshaw, not taking alcohol because he might have to donate blood for someone and even stalks his sister for her good. Looking at the sheer lack of any emotions on the face of the actor who played this character, I googled the name of the producer of the film, and the image results proved that my gut feeling was right. The name of the actor was Gireesh Neyyar, and he is the producer of this atrocious film written by Dinesh Pallath.

So, the movie opens with the mysterious death of a businessman named John Kalathil. While the investigation was happening about John’s death, his wife Elizabeth met with an accident and died. Before her death, she sees our hero, Hemanth, and asks him to go and meet a man named Balan. What all unfolds when Hemanth meets Balan and who is the person responsible for the death of John and Elizabeth is what we get to see in Virunnu.

The movie is so disjointed and scattered that I don’t think, barring the producer, anyone in the cast would know what the story is. Dinesh Pallath’s script is stuck in the ’90s, and the writing is horribly outdated. In one particular scene, director Ajay Vasudev is seen in a character, and he describes the young boys as “kanal”, and he further says, “oru thari mathi.” I mean, the audacity to think that this scene will give goosebumps to a 2024 audience shows how spectacularly clueless these filmmakers are. In the second half of the movie, the film takes a completely different track, and you will realize that the producer’s character had no significance in the main story.

The making style of Kannan Thamarakkulam has all those camera gimmicks, and there are far too many cuts to make the movie look like a fast-paced film. The cinematography is handled by Ravi Chandran and Pradeep Nair, and the lighting and framing of the climax bits, along with shoddy production design, will remind you of those poor daily soaps. The writing is so pathetic that the only thing fresh about this movie is the anti-tobacco ad that comes at the beginning. Yes, we have a new one! Towards the end, when Arjun preached to the younger audience not to follow satan worshipping, the younger folks in the audience stood up and clapped while the rest laughed.

Tamil actor Arjun is playing this typical action hero kind of character, and if our hero had any grace, this character would have been irrelevant. Rather than acting, Arjun is mostly flexing his muscles and showing swagger in every movement of the character. Gireesh Neyyar is humiliating himself using his own money by showing the audience his inability to deliver lines. The sad part was the fact that all the free ticket folks were mockingly clapping for his performance without realizing Gireesh may well have sponsored their tickets. Nicky Galrani plays her part in an okay manner, and even after losing both her parents in a short span of time, the hair and makeup of the character were intact in every scene. Mukesh and Sona Nair play the part of Galrani’s parents in the film. Baiju Santhosh plays a communist leader, Balan, in the movie, and it was perhaps the only performance that felt somewhat real. Hareesh Perady, as the unintentionally funny villain, gives you some relief in that tiring climax.

I know some of you must be thinking, what else were you expecting from the deadly combo of Kannan Thamarakkulam and Dinesh Pallath? Well, human beings evolve, and I was hoping Thamarakkulam and Pallath would give up on scamming the audience with trashy content. With the OTT market changing its strategy to pick only movies that have worked in the theater, I hope this fast-food filmmaking duo will finally consider craft over crap in order to survive in the industry.