Sirai - movie review

Of all the movies, that i wanted to see, never imagined i would be posting a review for this one!! Such has been the low profile entry of this movie that, apart from couple of interviews where it was mentioned as a decent one in recent times, i never came across any promotions or even reviews for this movie!! But again, a good product is its own advertisement. I happened to watch this one over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. It has a run time of 100 odd minutes and if you skip through the 2 montage songs and small bit of romance portion involving Vikram, not that they were bad or dragging, but didn't feel like it. The story, for its run time, is quite taught and engaging. Surprisingly, despite being the only famous name in the movie cast, Vikram prabhu is not the hero, though he has more screen time than the hero character himself. The story is about a person on trial who has to be produced in court. Being the escort for that prisoner, what happens during the journey, how it changes the life of the prisoner as well as the escort constable forms the story line. There were couple of scenes, with the whole story running into less than 100 minutes, there are hardly enough scenes for that matter, which are quite hard hitting and possibly the reason why the movie did so well, despite such a lowkey promotion. There is a scene where the local police, with the escaped prisoner having taken refuge there, asks for the escort police about their rifle, which the guy says its loaded because the prisoner being muslim. The dialogues are very short and crisp and the stares that the police inspector exchanges with the rest of the people on the scene conveys all things that the director wanted to say, without putting them on as many words. The cherry on top being, when the inspector tells them the famous personality sharing the same name as the prisoner and why that name was famous, it creates the impact what many whole length movies couldn't manage. It is not propaganda or preachy, but straight facts that makes the scene all the more superb and elevated. 

It made me wonder the status of people in jail and also about targeted populations. How certain things which are taken for granted by majority and how certain people have to struggle for them. How even basic things like food, soap, comb are premium for prisoners and at the same time the plight of jail officers and why bribery is so rampant in jails, not just in India but possibly worldwide!! The supposedly correctional institutions often tend to be me the most corrupt of them all, for as a society, we tend to look at those places as punishment areas rather than repent or correction. Those who are convicted or even arrested for that matter are destined and relegated to whatever fate they encounter in the prison and more often than not, it breaks a person into someone undistinguishable from the one who entered that world. On the same hand, one can't build five star luxury suites for convicts while rest of the "law abiding" population struggles for the same outside. But there should be a guideline and more importantly it should be followed if at all those institutes have to justify the names given to them or their purpose of existence. I dont think any of these will ever happen and if at all there is a slight improvement in this area, it would truly mean a lot and show us up as a society.