Sivakarthikeyan’s campus tale is a formulaic but entertaining drama
Don Film Overview: On condition that his strict father (Samuthirakani), or as he describes him, the “sirappana tharamana villain” in his life desires him to check exhausting, Chakaravarthi (Sivakarthikeyan), the protagonist of Don, decides that he’d fairly make a reputation for himself with out actually learning. The movie is all about whether or not this younger man manages to determine what he desires to do in life whereas being in a soul-sucking environmental – an engineering school. Including to his misfortune is Boominathan (SJ Suryah), a school member within the school, who’s much more of a disciplinarian than his dad!
With this Santhosh Subramaniam-meets-Nanban set-up, debutant director Cibi Chakaravarthi makes it attainable for him to play to each the youthful and older crowd. He neatly divides the movie into two halves – the first-half for the youth, the second-half for the household viewers. Sure, we see how calculated this method is, which makes Don much less of a coming-of-age story and extra of a business entertainer (suitably, cinematographer KM Bhaskaran fills the frames with colors), however the director manages to succeed.
For probably the most elements, the movie is constructed across the battle between Chakaravarthi, the faculty’s Don, and Boomi, and Sivakarthikeyan and SJ Suryah’s energetic performances make these parts come alive. The strikes and counter-moves that the 2 provide you with to carry down the opposite ends in fairly a number of enjoyable moments, just like the episode when Boomi arranges a parent-teacher assembly with Don’s father or when Don manages to place the lecturers within the college students’ sneakers. This battle of wits is interspersed with a number of moments of romance between Don and Angayarkanni (Priyanka Mohan, okayish), which is typically cute and at instances cringey.
Issues veer into the sentimental territory within the remaining parts and do get dangerously near treacly melodrama, which is tonally off from the light-hearted tone we get till then, however fortunately, it would not derail the movie. That mentioned, the feelings it makes us really feel in these scenes do not feel well-earned because it tries to go of poisonous parenting as a type of ‘untold love’. Whereas the road about mother and father determining elevating their youngster by trial and error rings true, it’s exhausting to purchase the movie’s makes an attempt to show Don’s father into an endearing determine, given the way in which the character treats his son till then.
Nonetheless, the forged makes it work. Sivakarthikeyan is an ideal match for this position, even promoting the college parts, and it’s his earnest efficiency within the climax (the real-life parallels add to the effectiveness) that truly lifts it. SJ Suryah is splendid in a job that might have simply grow to be caricaturish (like Sathyaraj’s character in Nanban). The minute modifications in his expressions add to the comedy within the first half. And Samuthirakani’s helps us overlook the last-minute transformation of his character. The remainder of the suporting forged — Soori, who seems as Chakaravarthi’s relative, Bala Saravanan, Vijay and Sivaangi, who play his mates, Aadhira Pandilakshmi as his mom — is strong, although the sub-plot involving Raju and Shariq as Chakaravarthi’s rivals in school feels compelled. One additionally needs that the director had discovered a solution to make Angayarkanni’s father — refreshingly, a genteel cop — a part of the proceedings within the latter levels, given how he’s used for some heat moments early on.
Lastly, Cibi Chakaravarthi’s conviction and Anirudh’s vibrant rating carry the movie over the ending line and be certain that regardless of the considerably formulaic remedy of this materials (it’s clearly influenced by the movies of the early 2000s), the movie stays largely entertaining.
