Velvet Nagaram Movie Review

Varalaxmi Sarathkumar’s Velvet Nagaram has been a decently awaited film for its title and visual promos that created some good expectations. Directed by debutant Manoj Kumar Natarajan, the film has Varalaxmi Sarathkumar in lead role with an ensemble star-cast comprising of Ramesh Thilak, Arjai, Santhosh Krishna, Maalavika Sundar, Prakash Raghavan, Kausalya, and many more prominent actors.

Story:

When a group of conniving chiselers including politicians set fire to the forest region to evacuate the native residents so as to build commercial blocks, an actress-social activist Gauri (Kausalya) gets all the proof needed to nail them down as criminals. While taking it forward to a leading journalist named Usha (Varalaxmi Sarathkumar), she is killed and it’s up to her to find out who are the real culprits behind this.

Story, Screenplay, Dialogues, and Direction:

Being a debutant, Manoj has come up with a unique story that picks your attention. However, his storytelling method is slightly middling. Although the running length is too short, which is more equal to Hollywood movies’ duration, it still lacks the engagement and we can feel the boredom prevailing there. As the story progresses towards intermission, where the twist was supposed to keep the audiences intact to guess what’s next, it fails to make it so. The penultimate and climax portions are good. If the director had maintained a similar treatment throughout the film, it would have been far better from what it is now. Dialogues in few places are really good.

Performances:

Varalaxmi Sarathkumar is a talented artiste, who can deliver any roles easily. But, she somewhere fails to deliver this role in an efficient manner. Of course, there are few portions, where she manages to gain our attention, but the scenes that demand her complete energy misses them. Ramesh Thilak does complete justice to his role. Arjai too makes use of the opportunity in a good way. Maalavika gives the best into her characterization. Prakash Raghavan is appealing. All the actors have taken this project seriously and made a good spell out of it.
Technical department

The one to instantly gain our interest is cinematographer Bhagath Kumar for a spellbinding work. It’s quite hard to keep the visuals at best despite being shot in a single location and he makes it great. Background score by Saran Raghavan is yet another highlighting trait in the movie. Action choreography by Thupparivalan Dinesh is commendable, but in more portions, it’s action blocks than the story, which should have been balanced properly by the director. Nothing to blame Dinesh though. Editing should have been far better as the scenes are too stretched and dragging.

On the whole, Velvet Nagar has a good plot, but screenwriting is a major problem. While few portions are really gripping, the narration drops down to the passable graph now and then. However, it’s a decent attempt and can be watched if you don’t have any particular watchlist for now.