Anjaathe (2008)

Cast : Naren, Ajmal Ameer, Vijayalakshmi, Ponvannan, Livingston, Pandiyarajan

Plot and Summary:

Anjaathe is a tamil action thriller directed by Mysskin. The film revolves around the the life of two friends Sathya(Naren) and Kirbukaren(Ajmal), how they are at first and how their relationship gets strained when one achieves a high in his life and the other fails. The film begins with an unusual fight sequence with the camera pointing toward the sky the whole time. Kiruba, a police aspirant gets beaten up by local thugs and he returns home without a fight. Sathya hears about this and beats them. We see that they are really close friends in the coming scenes of the film. Kiruba is really ambitious of becoming a police while Sathya wastes his time with the friends in the local gang. A point comes in his life when his father criticises him so much that he also writes for the Inspector selection exam along with Kiruba.  With recommendation Sathya becomes a police while Kiruba  is rejected. This is one of the turn point of the film where beginning of the Protagonist and the antagonist starts.

The rest of the film is pretty much how Kiruba becomes obsessed with defeating Sathya and how Sathya though becomes a police, is constantly tormented by the failure of their friendship. Mysskin's narrative can be easily observed in the film, His way of showing only an element of the scene and draw the attention of the viewers to the Background. It is really poetic how Kiruba gets to the dark side. He even seems to be much like how Sathya looked in the Beginning.

Daya( Prasanna) can be considered as the Antagonist in the film, he plays the role of "a devil" in the film. He takes his time to corner Kiruba into his trap. Mysskin beautifully uses lighting to show Daya's malice, in the scene when Kiruba's Father is admitted and Kiruba asks Daya for money , Daya's face comes into the spotlight exactly when he is tricking Kiruba and there are many other instances which are depicted in the film which makes Anjaathe like a play with portrayal of direct human emotion.

Naren's portrayal of Sathya is one of the best in his career. Sathya's character on paper is really unique and Naren does justice to it. It is not as just a suave cop that Naren is , but more than that. He first confronts the brutal realities one must face in a police job and then he is confused and delusional at times when he finds out that Kiruba is part of the gang he is investigating. There are scenes in which all the rest of his crew are listening to a tapped call from the kidnappers and only Sathya recognises Kiruba's voice and the background fades away and there the violin and Sathya trying to control himself from breaking down. Untill the end Kiruba just gets more and more obsessed in killing Sathya that at one point he admits that he has gone bad and repents in some scenes but his ego to beat than Sathya gets the better out of him. The film ends with Death of Kiruba in Sathya's hands.

Verdict:

Anjaathe begins with Avaiyaars versers " Acham Thavir" ( Loose the Fear). True to its name the film is about how Sathya gets over his fear of loosing his friend and ends up taking the righteous choice though it costed his friends life. The film in many was really off beat, not in any way commercial but was  commercially successful. Though the character change of Kiruba at the end was really abrupt, It is convincing. Anjaathe can be considered as one of the best films Mysskin has ever made one which true to his genre and worked with the audience well.