Avinash Ramachandran

It is a silent night, and something really huge is expected to unfold. The cops are ready, and a huge consignment of guns is being transported. A nefarious plan to make Tamil Nadu the ‘Gun Capital’ of India is underway. The top brass of the police have surrounded the trucks. But things go awry. The big dog among the cops, Officer Prem (an assured Biju Menon), has his binoculars trained on one man who is nonchalantly dismantling people in his way. His mere presence is unnerving, and everyone there knows that the fight would be one-sided. And nope, that is not the introduction of Sivakarthikeyan’s Raghu, but Vidyut Jammwal’s Virat, the primary antagonist of Madharaasi. In contrast, Raghu just walks into the frame, gearing up to drunkenly dance and sing to the crowd about his love failure. This is quite a ‘different’ start to a film, but one that is absolutely in tune with whatever follows in this mad ride that hopes you have faith in the filmmaker to steer things home safely, even if it hits a few roadblocks on the way. And for the man who made films like Dheena, Ramana, Ghajini, Thuppakki, and Kaththi, Madharaasi might just be a reminder that he still has it in him.

Mohanlal and Sathyan Anthikad have been defining the emotional core of the average Malayali for over four decades now. Despite technological advancements, the propensity for action extravaganzas in today’s times, and the seeming erosion of the audience’s attention span, Mohanlal and Sathyan reunite for a film that reminds us why these two were allowed to define emotions closest to our hearts. Anger, love, fear, guilt, regret, happiness, devastating sadness, and a smile that finds its way through it all…

The moment we commodified weddings and started calling it the marriage ‘market’, many brides and grooms became products that came with a selling price, a buying price, and unfortunately, an expiry date too. They are depreciating assets, and it is one such asset that is the protagonist in director Shanmuga Priyan’s debut film, Love Marriage, a rather faithful remake of Vishwak Sen’s Ashoka Vanamlo Arjuna Kalyanam. Ramachandran (Vikram Prabhu) is in his early thirties and is already considered to be past his sell-by date. He is part of a misogynistic and casteist family, which has relaxed its rules since they haven’t found the right suitor within their caste and class. That is the scheme of things in many a family in the arranged marriage setup. And after multiple rejections due to his age, greying hair, rumours of balding, and his profession, Ramachandran’s family decides to travel far away from home and get engaged to Ambika (Sushmitha Bhat), who is from a different caste.