Vellai Pookkal Tamil HD DVD Released

When it comes to whodunits, casting is crucial because the moment you have a well-known actor, the audience starts to focus on their actions specifically in order to outguess the revelation. Vellai Pookal makes some smart choices to neutralise this challenge. One of these is obviously the casting of Vivekh, an actor who is known more as a comedian, as its protagonist – retired cop Rudhran. Despite seeming a bit awkward in certain scenes, the actor pulls it off thanks to his persistence.

Rudhran has come to the US to live with his son, Ajay (Dev), with whom he hasn’t been on good terms for the past three years. We quickly surmise why. Ajay’s wife, Alice (Paige Henderson) is an American. Rudhran doesn’t even make an effort to be cordial with her.

Even as he gets accustomed to a life that one character likens to “kambi illadha jail”, he befriends Bharathidasan (Charlie, the film’s comic sidekick), another retired person living with his daughter Ramya (Pooja Devariya). Incidentally, Ramya happens to be Ajay’s co-worker as well.

When a neighbour gets kidnapped by a mystery person, Rudhran’s cop instincts come to the fore and he, with Bharathi as his Watson, decides to play Sherlock. But very soon, the case becomes a personal one for him. Meanwhile, we also get a parallel track, involving a little girl who is being abused by her own father.

Even when it lacks assuredness in terms of form, Vellai Pookal remains sure-footed in its storytelling and keeps us engrossed. It presents us with a solid mystery and unravels it with confidence. The director spends some time setting up the suspects, and thought we are able to dismiss a few of the red herrings instantly, a couple of those are fairly convincing. One of these is smart casting while the other is a nice hat-tip to a narrative device – involving different time lines – that detective novels employ. In fact, the director manages to make this aspect, which usually works only on paper, seem convincing without making us feel cheated.

But some of its visual experiments do not work as well. Like the idea to gives us scenes where we see Rudhran committing the crime, to convey the fact that he puts himself in the shoes of the criminals to solve his cases. The visual recreation of the cop’s thought process, though a bit inelegant, fares better.