Writer movie review: One of the most important films of Tamil cinema, a polite answer to chest-thumping cop movies

Debutant director Franklin Jacob’s Author will go down as one of the crucial necessary movies of Tamil cinema. Minimize from the identical material as Vetrimaaran’s Visaranai and Jai Bhim, Author shines the highlight on a distinct points of the police division. Tamil cinema has at all times used police pressure as a medium to glorify its heroes with out bearing on their actually human facet. Author turns this trope on its head and provides us a protagonist who has been in police service for over 30 years however has by no means left the desk.

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Head constable cum author Thangaraj (Samuthirakani) is due for his retirement in just a few months. In his police station in Trichy, everybody appears to be like as much as Thangaraj. He’s duty-bound however on the identical time caring and pragmatic. He’s not the buff variety with a penchant understanding and may barely run just a few metres earlier than gasping for breath. For years, Thangaraj has been working in the direction of establishing a police union, regardless of dealing with stiff opposition from his division and seniors. When Thangaraj will get transferred to Chennai and crosses paths with Devakumar (Hari Krishnan), a Dalit-Christian PhD scholar, his life takes an surprising flip.

Not like most cop motion pictures, Author isn’t simply concerning the corrupt cops within the system, but in addition focuses on the price some males within the pressure should pay for the recklessness of their seniors. As a line within the film goes, ‘anybody with out energy within the pressure is a servant’. As a lot as Author is about some power-abusing police officers, it additionally talks concerning the psychological well being of policemen and the fixed stress they’re beneath on a day-to-day foundation. The movie tries to humanize policemen as an alternative of turning them into crime-fighting, never-tiring heroes. The movie additionally addresses the difficulty of caste-based discrimination, a recurring theme in movies headlined by Pa. Ranjith (who has produced this one), and one which deserves to be mentioned extra typically and brazenly. Fortunately, this isn’t a movie solely concerning the males within the division. There’s a robust subplot involving a feminine officer (Ineya) from a decrease caste, aspiring to turn into a police horse rider.

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Samuthirakani brings a lot of life into the function of Thangaraj, and it’s a efficiency that actually stands out. He makes Thangaraj not a helpless police constable however one with a conscience, and I doubt if another actor might’ve pulled off this character as successfully as him. Hari Krishnan because the helpless Dalit sufferer who’s retained with out a purpose is one other efficiency that’ll stick with you for some time. Your entire stretch involving his character is each haunting and heartbreaking. The helplessness that Hari Krishnan brings out by his efficiency will go away you gutted. Kavin Jay Babu because the north Indian Deputy Commissioner is the sort of villain Tamil cinema has not often seen, and he’s sensible from the primary body. His heavy Hindi-accented Tamil is the proper icing on the cake his efficiency wanted. Ineya, too, shines in an important cameo.

Author is the sort of movie that goes past the that means of leisure, and it leaves you enlightened. It makes you query the very division that’s meant to guard us and be at our service.

Author
Director: Franklin Jacob
Solid: Samuthirakani, Dileepan, Ineya Hari Krishnan, Kavin Jay Babu and G.M Sundar

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