Just like his real-life persona, Suriya has done his fair share to talk about social issues without compromising on commercial aspects in Etharkkum Thuninthavan. Directed by Pandiraj who has a track record of giving successful family-sentiment oriented subjects that have punch dialogues, duet songs and comedy tracks, Etharkum Thuninthavan also qualifies as a perfect family entertainer. The story is loosely based on the 2019 Pollachi sexual assault case. And so, with a rural backdrop in place, the emotional quotient and the scope for drama is high.
The villain in Etharkum Thuninthavan, played by Vinai Rai, uses youth to lure women into relationships and exploits them to seek favours from powerful men. Drawing the reference to Krishna in Mahabharata who saves Draupadi from humiliation, Suriya as Kannabiran plays a lawyer who saves victims affected by Vinai’s men. Through the film, the director does the good deed of spreading the word about the "Kavalan SOS" app for women’s safety which can be used during any emergency.
However, talking about the villain, the character wasn't really fleshed out. We know he is a bad person who does bad things, but we really don’t know why he is behaving the way he is behaving. With respect to the protagonist, there are a lot of mass action hero moments for Surya, but, the film kind of slips into the typical template where the hero saves a girl in danger, slow motion shots of the hero kicking the goons like a football and hitting them with an iron rod at the back of the head. Though they are good and watchable, the scenes aren't innovative, it felt like they are something that we are so used to seeing for a long time.
The dialogues of Etharkum Thuninthavan are a plus and a minus to the film. It is a mixed bag of cliche and noteworthy dialogues in almost equal proportions. For instance, there is an apparently massy dialogue where Suriya says, “If I wear a coat (referring to his lawyer's coat), the judge is different. But if I wear my dhoti, I am the judge myself (referring to the fact that he will get justice with his action sequences)”. But there are powerful dialogues too. For instance, when his wife is blackmailed with a private video , he asks, “Why do you need to be ashamed when none of it is your mistake”, and “Instead of teaching our men not to cry, we need to teach them not to make a woman cry”.
Watching Etharkum Thuninthavan, I got vaguely reminded of a physics concept “moment of inertia” that we probably studied in middle school. For example, When you are in a moving vehicle and suddenly when the driver applies a brake, you get this sudden shock and tend to almost fall because your body experiences a sudden change. The screenplay of the movie gave a very similar experience. Because just when you enjoy the entertaining sequences with the family galata, they throw some serious issues, and the clock is ticking to chase the villain. Just when you feel invested in that serious problem, they take you back to a humour track.
I understand that even though Kannabiran is a lawyer who deals with serious criminal cases, he also has a personal life, he gets married around the same time, he has fun with his family. But while the movie switches constantly from comedy to tragedy and tragedy to comedy, the transitions could have been a lot smoother to create a better experience.
What really felt heart-warming in the film is that they don't shame a woman for trusting a man and being in a relationship. The makers demand that the abusive men be accountable for exploiting the woman’s trust. I want to mention two other movies at this point. Rajnikanth’s Enthiran and Kamal Hassan’s Papanasam which is the Tamil remake of the Malayalam movie Dhrishyam.
In Papanasam, When the daughter accidentally kills her harasser, the father tries to save her by hook or by crook. At no point does he ask her not to be ashamed. Similarly, in Enthiran, the robot saves a woman from a building on fire. The woman jumps in front of a vehicle to kill herself thinking she lost her respect as the bystanders saw her nude when she was saved. The scientist Vasi teaches the robot on how to save a woman in future with her clothings on, even in such emergency situations. However, in Etharkum Thuninthavan, the entire scene where Kannabiran and his wife Adhini have the tough conversation, where Surya explains why the corrupted minds who secretly record the intimate video should be ashamed than she being ashamed of herself and her nudity in the video.
The best thing about Etharkkum Thunindhavan is that though the protagonist Suriya is the person who is directly affected by the tragedy, he goes through a personal trauma and despite that he doesn’t go after the villain because of personal vengeance. He stands for every woman just like how he stands for his own sister and wife. He constantly tries to make things work the legal way and loses his cool only when he is pushed beyond his boundaries and resorts to violence when all his legal options are exhausted. Not that it is right, but you can really empathize with his emotions there. And that’s why he is willing to face the legal repercussions of his actions.
While Etharkkum Thunindhavan is not perfect and has its own flaws, it is a decent attempt as a commercial entertainer with a social cause.
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