Yeman - review

Another interesting story selection by Vijay Anthony and possibly another hit for him as well. This man surely knows what works for him and what doesn’t. To me he is like Ranatunga, the best cricket captain of Srilanka (and possibly ever). Any person, be it a sportsman or not, will dismiss Ranatunga as just another pot bellied beer guzzler and would never in their wildest dreams believe that he had played every single test match for his country right from the first match and had won them their first world cup in an painstakingly physical and agonizingly mental game. When fielding, the scorecard might hardly contain any reference of Ranatunga, as he never bowls and nor was a wicket keeper. Considering his “not-so-athletic” figure and being the captain, his side was always considered to be one fielder short. But this guy had a knack of hiding himself on the open field. He would station himself at such odd places, the batsmen at times might be lulled into thinking who would be fielding at this position and offer him a chance. Of course I am trivializing that great man’s fielding skills just for fun. To me Vijay Anthony is the Ranatunga of tamil movies where he hides his limitations under the crispiness of the script.

in “Yeman”, he plays dual role, for second movie running after “Saithan”, as both father and son. The father character dying within ten minutes of movie run time followed by the mother character makes one wonder this could be yet another revenge/political story. But it isn’t. Obviously the script writer has conceived situations which are similar to hundreds of movies before and had deliberately changed the way it’s handled by the hero. The twists and turns on the story, with each character back stabbing the other in a musical chair game of murders, no prize for guessing who ends up the winner. The scenes between Thiyagarajan and Vijay Anthony and how they plot the downfall of each others opponents are nothing short of a chess game. The dialogues are so straight forward that you could feel yourself nodding a response. The climax finish of the villain is another new with the hero taking revenge on him for his dad’s death, without even knowing about the history. Also, the fact “that-you-can-be-victorious-but-your-conscious-will-still-haunt-you” kind of an ending was a nice touch again by the director. Heroine, as in all VA’s movies is the weakest of links and is there just for the mandatory duet, which again is the second weakest of the links. Usually, he manages one nice song in all his movies, with Yeman being a rare exception where every song falls flat. He rules in BGM and has reserved the best for his intro scenes and mass scenes.

Gils verdict – Yeman is probably one of the neatest political thrillers in recent times and considering the weak script that says a lot about dearth of quality films in this genre. It’s not every day you get an “Amaidhi padai” and have to make do with these movies. Wonder if any of the current crop of heroes would’ve had the stomach to pick any of the recent scripts handled by VA and especially this one. It takes a really neutral personality devoid of any pre-slotted image to shoulder and deliver this movie and VA does exactly that. But having managed it, he may probably have hinted at taking up more masala roles in future, involving mass heroism. Hope he stays away from that bad idea, for he has made such an investment in cultivating a fan following who likes his movies not only for their “superstition-my-foot” kind of titles which are solely dependent on scripts. Him, along with Arulnidhi and Vijay sethupathi are people whose movies are always backed by strong scripts and decent storyline. Hope they stay true to that J Yeman – definitely not a “uyir vaangifying” movie.