Review: V3
Parts of the film work but they alone are not sufficient enough to define V3 as being good and engaging.
Film: V3
Director:Amudhavanan
Cast:Varalaxmi Sarathkumar (Sivagami), Paavana (Vindhya) , Esther Anil (Viji), Aadukalam Naren (Velayutham), Visaranai Kathai and others
Music: Allen Sebastian
Cinematography: Siva Prabhu
Rating: 2 stars
Director Amudhavanan’s ‘V3’ is a film that has both — portions that win your appreciation and portions that deserve your condemnation. But unfortunately, the latter is more than the former and therefore, the film comes a cropper.
The film is a crime drama which revolves around the rape of an UPSC aspirant called Vindhya (played by Paavana).
The elder daughter of a newspaper vendor called Velayutham (Aadukalam Naren), she heads to write an examination at a centre that is far from home.
By the time she returns to her hometown, it is late in the night. She calls her dad to let him know that she has arrived at the local railway station and says she will come home all by herself as she has her vehicle parked nearby.
Unfortunately though, her two-wheeler stalls half way through. As she struggles to restart it, she is spotted by five criminals whiling away time in a lorry. They rape her on the pretext of helping her and then eventually burn her body under a desolate bridge. What happens then is what the story is all about.
The film’s plot seems to have been inspired by a rape incident that recently occurred on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The police swiftly swung into action in the case and killed a few people, who they claimed had committed the crime. The fake encounter delighted the public, who hailed the cops as heroes.
The first half of the film makes several noteworthy points and is in fact, quite engaging.
It shows how cops, to easen the excessive pressure exerted upon them by society in cases pertaining to crimes against women, hurriedly pick up poor men with little or no influence and make them scapegoats in such cases. It also goes on to show how real criminals continue to go scot-free, thanks to politicians who are intent on protecting their government’s image in the public.
In the first half, director Amudhavanan sensibly and intelligently conveys the intensity of the actual crime in a non offensive manner. He shows it through the cops asking the suspects to enact how they went about committing the crime.
However, he undoes this good work in the second half by showing visuals of the actual crime. The second half is also not as engaging as the first and comes across as being preachy.
The director finishes the film with a plea for legalising prostitution. The plea appears to be out of place as the story and the plea have at best a very feeble connection.
Varalakshmi Sarathkumar delivers a decent performance as Sivagami, the officer appointed to head the National Human Rights panel appointed to probe the polic encounter.
Aadukalam Naren, Paavana who plays the rape victim and Esther Anil, who plays the victim’s sister too come up with reasonably good performances.
The film could have been a hard-hitting one had the director stopped with just making his point about fake encounters. However, by looking to make several points of significance through one single plot, the director loses focus and the film loses its ability to retain the interest of the audience.
Parts of the film work but they alone are not sufficient enough to define V3 as being good and engaging.
