Raayan (2024)

**𝑺𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅. 𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈. 𝑰'𝒎 𝒕𝒓𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒆𝒘. 𝑯𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒊𝒕 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒚.**

Raayan has been watched. Dhanush's 50th movie, arguably the best actor the industry has seen since Kamal and a director who made the lovable Power Paandi. I was truly intrigued by the trailer with Dhanush factor being a major reason. I could jump to the Dhanush fanbase in a minute if AK were to hang his boot.

So, coming to the movie. The trailer was really good. It promised me a ratham therikka therikka revenge drama. Unfortunately, there's only blood shed and absolutely no drama nor any revenge at all that I can invest in it.

The first half was laudably good while the second half was laughably bad. The story starts right away with Dhanush's childhood story and it was narrated well that pulled me into the film. Dhanush the director takes his own time to set-up the premise with various characters and they are all done very neatly. I wasn't bored. There's a police officer seeking revenge. Two gangs in the cold war are about to burst at each other. And, there's Dhanush who's leading a simple life with his two brothers and a sister. How these 4 groups intertwine with each other forms the crux of the story. The 4 groups merge at the interval with a rousing action block.

We already knew the movie gets bad in the second half. We just hoped the second half would be at least decent so the movie could end as a decent outing overall. To the joy of STR fans, the second half was unintentionally funny and very bad, much worse than the VTK second half, the movie turned out to be a forgettable outing overall.

The story doesn't move at all. It's as if Dhanush ran out of ideas to proceed forward. The conflict wasn't strong nor was the screenplay any good to get me interested. The supposed twist was a bit shocking, not because of the twist itself but because I didn't expect Dhanush to go back to the age-old backstabbing troupe.

Whatever life left in the movie was sucked right away with it. There's a hilarious fight scene in the hospital kinda set up. A bunch of goons attempt to kill the hero recovering from fatal wounds but are stopped by the sister and an old man. The screenplay gets bad and bad with every passing scene that the movie felt much longer than it should have.

Dhanush as the actor does a decent job in portraying the character with a restrained emotion very well. He gets his own mass action blocks and he's effortless. SJ Surya as the main antagonist was decent. The character was written badly but the actor made it good with his performance. Sundeep Kishan is the major scorer among the supporting cast while Selvaraghavan was a major miscast who gets another "meaty" role like Beast. At least, there he was made to hype up one guy. Here, he hypes up the entire family.

Raayan might end up as a bad to average film in Dhanush's filmography but it's a well directed film and major credits goes to the technical aspects of the movie. Technically, the movie is top notch. The score from Rahman with a tinge of Jailer influence was terrific.

~𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹, 𝗥𝗮𝗮𝘆𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗮 𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗳 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸(𝗸 𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁) 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗳.

P.S.: In the afterthoughts, the only reason for Dhanush to direct such a movie is that he must have had a bet with Vetri that he would direct a gangster movie better than Vadachennai, too much influence. If any such thing were to exist, Dhanush lost it badly.

Hope Dhanush joins with Vetri to shoot Vadachennai 2 as the penalty.

#Raayan