Thadam (2019) & Arun Vijay’s “Second coming”

Arun Vijay has somehow become the talk of K’Town, The roles he does has improved and film he chooses are working well. May be it’s his time in Kollywood now. We all know that it all started with Vikor or even before that in Malai Malai. But the way he had carried himself after Viktor is quite impressive. If we look at his career graph, He has been in the industry as long as Vijay and Ajith, Except for a few minor hits we have not seen much from him until Viktor which was around 5 years ago. Somehow I felt that Arun Vijay portrays the character of Vikor very well, even the dialogs which he uses in the film can describe his career well.

Short Gist:

A whodunit where ArunVijay is accused of Murder

I didn’t really follow his latest work for some time now, I was just under the impression that he is choosing his films well and things are working out for him. This was until I saw Thadam, This is his second film with director Magizh Thirumeni after Thadayara Thaka which came about 2-3 years back. What a combo! These two. Thadayara Thaka was out and out entertainer but it had a good story line and how the director reveals the story needs to be appreciated. Until the last moment of the film we could not predict how the story was going to end. Also the film was a bit dark for an entertainer. But the second one Thadam was even better, I think Magizh had even better freedom to do what he wanted, there were fewer commercial elements and much more focus was given to story and the screenplay. This film is essentially a Whodunit, and the ending is completely unpredictable.

Arun Vijay completely does justice to both the roles. It was actually confusing to see him play both the roles(A bit of a spoiler here) we can’t really predict that the Arun Vijay plays a dual role until nearly the first half of the film. This is a typical style which Magizh uses in both his Thadayara Thaka and also in Thadam. The main aspect of Thadam is that the screenplay, it just pans from one character description to the other repeatedly throughout the film until both narratives merge at one point. Even then story does not becomes absolutely clear, the director always keeps some twists until the end.

This film is one of Arun Vijay’s best performances. I would even go ahead and call it the best performance but I think Vikor was better. However, in Thadam he plays two roles and occupies most of the screen space. In any case I liked this one better, there was so much suspense, so much unpredictability, subtleness with which the screenplay was dealt. All in all it felt like a film taken by a top class team.

 Somehow this combo has worked twice, if we see Magizh’s career also, it is not really filled with success. But with Arun Vijay they seemed to have found a way to make it work. Hope to see more films of such kind from the combo.

Star Cast: 

Arun Vijay, Tanya Hope, Vidhya Pradheep, Yogi Babu