Movie Review: Maanagaram (Tamil)

Maanagaram is an exercise in genius plotting. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a thriller as precisely designed as this one. A ride so enthralling that all you can do is keep guessing as the situations play out in unexpected and unpredictable ways. I found myself completely invested in the narrative, in director Lokesh Kanagaraj's vision, despite the occasional hiccups, the prominent being the forced romantic track that seems to have been shoehorned into the story with no real purpose in mind.

But for that, the stories themselves are rooted in reality, the characters well-fleshed out, as the predicaments they find themselves in knowingly (or unknowingly) set off a train of events (like a stack of falling dominoes) that drives the plot forward towards a thrilling finish. That the lives of these people are hyperlinked (by design) only adds to its charm, and you can't help but marvel at the filmmaking that's on show as the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall together to reveal the complete picture. Maanagaram may be about the big city life and the dangers that come with it, but as a film it's couldn't have been more top-notch.