Dharma Yogi

PLOT : In a village a dumb and deaf man wants to become a political leader believing in the ideals of his party. He even burns himself alive to achieve what his party leader aims to. He has twins as children who can hear and talk. While he decides to bring his elder son Yogi (Dhanush) as political leader he leaves his second son, Dharma (Dhanush) for family. He sacrifices his life for party asking his son to follow his idea of becoming a political leader. As the time flies by Yogi becomes a crucial youth leader in his party while Dharma settles for a professor job. Dharma meets Guddla Malathi (Anupama Parameshwaran) and develops feelings for her. Yogi is already in love with ambitious Rudra (Trisha) who has high ambitions to become minister and chief Minister some day. There is a clash in their relation and that results to a dangerous twist in the story! What is the twist? Why do they clash and what happens to their relationship? Watch it on big screen..

Performances : Dhanush for the first time in his career did dual roles but hardly there is much difference in both the characters. This might have been good for the twist in the screenplay that arrives late, but this is just some lazy writing. Dhanush could have easily pulled off even more complex characters has he did early. Even though he tries to bring in tiny nuances and minute changes to fit the bill, they are highly rare and bring nothing much to the forefront. He needed a better script and even better characters than a play for gallery kind of filmsy script that tries hard to portray everything real and believable.

Anupama Parameshwaran was wasted in her role, may be it was new for her but for her talent and capabilities, she would easily pulled off Trisha’s character better than her. Coming to Trisha, a glam doll trying hard to prove her acting skills wastes a sincere opportunity to shine. She can’t rise above her usual expressions and keeps repeating the same expression after two three scenes and it is easy to guess that someone is trying hard to act in front of camera rather than being natural which was required for this kind of a script. Her lack of skills are exposed mainly when film relied entirely on her to move ahead in the second hour.

Saranya Ponvanan did her role justice as the mother. Karunas as father set the tone of the film right and S.A. Chandrasekhar as Party leader does bring a certain credibility to his performance. Kaali Venkat got two scenes to shine and he did them justice. All others are there to fill up the screens and they did what was asked of them perfect to the tee.

Technicalities : Cameraman work needs to applauded in this film, for bringing a certain tone and authenticity to the film and proceedings. Venkatesh gave the film a certain consistent tone and handled the locations pretty well.

Editor Prakash tried hard to keep the pace right and achieved his best by not letting things to drag out more than required. Music by Santhosh Narayanan is yet again a mediocre attempt and high wastage of opportunity. He did better in Back Ground Score but his songs were completely boring exercise to our ears.

Writer Director RS Durai did announce himself on to the screen with highly predictable Kaaki Sattai and when he got an opportunity to work with Dhanush one would have expected him to cater to the mass base of the actor and work out the sequences that play for the gallery well. But he tried to utilize the actor Dhanush in the commercial space rather he ended up wasting the sincere efforts of his lead actor.

The abysmal and lazy writing doesn’t try to pay off its characters or the points that it started off with. It looks like he imagined an internal block wrote a back up story for it and then worked on the idea further trying to make political commentary. But for his twists to work he needed to plot everything well enough. But in trying to out guess the audience and keep them guessing he wrote scenes in a silly way. One should have asked him just go for the two interesting male and female characters from two different parties, their love story, lust for power and explore it further, rather his loop hole filled logic less silly narration to establish one point just one point that is, Once born twins are always twins looks amateurish and forgettable.

Analysis : When you have a powerhouse of talent at your disposal and an actor with acceptance, you tend to ride on his wave and abilities but you do need a script that can stitch everything tighter. In a film that falls on its flat since the first scene and then flies with sparks here and there you tend to miss your hard earned money and time. A filmmaker needs to understand that if some actor had acquired an image over years of hard work you should try to use it in a more responsible way rather than making a lazy ass attempt at creating a box office hit. Highly avoidable attempt.

This Dharma and Yogi help us enjoy a yoga nidra in theatres.

Rating: 2.5/5

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