Movie Review: Visaaranai (Tamil)

Vetrimaaran's Visaaranai (meaning Interrogation) is vivid docu-crime filmmaking at its finest. So chilling and powerful is the film (based on the novel Lock Up written by M. Chandrakumar), it lends the voiceless a voice while throwing light on the injustices and the brutal ways the system toys with them. Well, not just them, as evidenced by the character of Muthuvel, a morally conflicted cop torn between his conscience and protecting himself. That the violence is horrifying is mildly putting it, although it's very much the all pervasive theme that shockingly repeats itself for a group of four hapless daily-wage earning labourers (who come from marginalised communities), even as the geographical landscape shifts from Guntur to Chennai. It's an indictment of police brutality and their high-handedness as much as it's an unnerving tale of extracting forced confessions out of innocent men under the pretext of solving crimes. Like Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, Visaaranai is not an easy watch, but true stories based on troubling realities often aren't.