Film: Vetadu Ventadu
Starring: Vishal, Trisha, Sunaina
Director: Thiru
Producer: Srinivas Damera
Banner: 5 Colors Multimedia
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja
Story
Shakthi (Vishal), is a forest ranger in Ooty. He is so engrossed in his work that he happens to forget the most important day in his life, which happens to be his girlfriend, Roopa's birthday. An upset Roopa calls off their relationship moves to Bangkok for good.
Three years later, Shakthi receives a letter from Roopa (Sunaina) asking him to come and meet her in Bangkok. He meets Maya (Trisha), a fellow passenger on his flight to Bangkok and they have a gala time.
In Bangkok, he is mistaken for a local business tycoon who is on the radar of mobsters. He is received by a team of men who claim to be his entourage and take him to his hotel, where Shakthi comes to learn that he is a doppelganger of a businessman also named Shakthi.
Few hours later, people who claimed he is the businessman Shakthi, now don't even recognise him. As Shakthi attempts to connect the dots, he soon learns that everything that's happening around him is part of a sick game that's been played by two villains - Rajesh Arunachalam (Manoj Bajpayee) and John Fredrick (J.D. Chekravarthy).
Will Shakthi be able to stop the baddies from continuing the game or not forms the rest of the story?
Performances
Vishal shines in his role and impresses in some excellent action sequences that are choreographed to perfection.
Sunaina hardly has any part to play while Trisha was reasonably mediocre in her performance. Manoj and JD were completely wasted in roles that could've sent chills up the audiences spines had only the director not made them look like 'jokers'.
Analysis
Vetadu Ventadu is the Telugu dubbed version of Tamil action-thriller "Samar",
which is heavily inspired by Spanish thriller "Dot The I". Quite different from several run-of-the-mill type films of the recent past, Vetadu Ventadu succeeds in keeping the audience hooked to a certain extent, but gradually slips into boredom.
If not a frame-to-frame copy of the original, Vetadu Ventadu does seem to have borrowed the plot from the foreign film to make it exciting enough to pique the interest of the regional audience.
The basic plot of the cat-and-mouse game has been neatly adapted from the Spanish film, but the director makes an attempt to make the film worth watching with his personal touch, which deserves sincere adulation. While the original was about a director who makes a film involving real characters, but here, it's about two sadistic villains who indulge in sick games involving real people.
Even though the film does have plenty of promising moments, but the tension it builds up to reveal the villains, doesn't quite leave an impact as the crooks turn out to be irksome and extremely artificial. It's sad to see highly talented actors such as Manoj and JD exhibit buffoonery in the name of villianism.
All they do in their respective roles is yell at the top of their lungs and laugh as though they were recently released from a mental institution.
If you want to see a sadistic villain, I recommend you revisit late Heath Ledger's performance as Joker in "The Dark Knight".
While one may find Trisha's part unnecessary initially but will realise later that she was very much needed. Thiru's direction missed the deftness of a riveting thriller. Even though he manages to impress at first, but doesn't produce an engaging finish.