The movie Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan starts with this elaborate character exposition, where they have used these AI-generated images to show us the history of our hero, who was a soldier and then an undercover super agent. The plot explained in those bits is so elaborate that I thought if these things were presented in the main narrative, it might have created some curiosity in the audience’s minds to understand the main character. Muddled with generic gangster world storytelling, awkwardly placed romance, vigilante justice, and a preachy ending that would make you facepalm, Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan from Goli Soda director Vijay Milton is a terrible film.
So, as I already mentioned, our main man was an agent who was involved in the murder of the son of a prominent politician in Chennai. For his safety, his superior, “Chief,” takes him to the Andaman Islands and asks him to just exist, laying a low profile. But, as you may have rightly guessed, the inner justice seeker doesn’t allow him to be quiet, and what happens in the life of Agent 2223 during his Andaman hiatus is what we see in Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan.
From the looks of it, it is pretty obvious that SD Vijay Milton plans to set up his multipart franchise film. But even if you have bigger ambitions for a possible sequel, there should be an engaging story in the first part of any franchise to make things exciting for the viewer. When you look at the screenplay of Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan, it’s like a ChatGPT-generated script with cliched tropes lifted from all those agent films that ever existed. In the first half, when the movie shows us the hero taking care of an injured dog, I got a bit worried that are we about to see a lame John Wick adaptation. But looking at how things panned out after that, I ended up thinking a lame John Wick adaptation would have been much better than what the movie eventually became.
Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan is Vijay Antony’s attempt to be that classic over-the-top hero we have seen in Tamil films. There is a scene towards the end of the movie in the restaurant where he asks Saranya Ponvannan’s character to tell the goons who helped her. For that scene to work, the grace of the hero was essential since the writing was unimaginative. Sadly, Vijay Antony doesn’t have that grace, and when they showed one of the goons’ hair getting blown because of the scream of the hero, I ended up giggling. Pruthvi Ambaar as Burma in that eccentric role is pretty annoying. Daali Dhananjaya plays the typical hyper-villain. R Sarathkumar and Sathyaraj are playing extended cameo-like roles in this movie. While the former is mostly on the ferry, the latter is in this fancy underwater chamber with dancebar-like lighting. Murli Sharma, Saranya Ponvannan, Megha Akash, Thalaivasal Vijay, etc., are the other names in the cast.
One of the major annoying elements in this movie for me was the use of intercuts. There are several instances in the film where editor KL Praveen is either intercutting between parallel events or events that happen at different times. There are screenplays in which that sort of cutting can help you create a smart distraction. But in the case of Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan, the editing was evidently jarring in several areas. Even if this movie gets a sequel or prequel, this particular story that happens in Andaman would have zero impact on the bigger picture. The most comical thing about the film, in my opinion, was how Vijay Milton decided to make the hero someone who gives enlightenment to our money lender villain who has killed multiple people for not returning the interest and money. In one of the fight sequences towards the end that happens in a dismantled space, one can see multiple lights very clearly in the frame, and Milton, being a cinematographer, thinking this was cool was even more baffling to understand.
Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan feels like that hasty, unnecessary super agent movie that SD Vijay Milton assembled quickly, in order to be part of the trend of franchise films. With unremarkable production quality and a shoddy screenplay filled with worn-out scripting tropes, Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan is somewhat of a patience tester.
With unremarkable production quality and a shoddy screenplay filled with worn-out scripting tropes, Mazhai Pidikatha Manithan is somewhat of a patience tester.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
