Film: Burma
Starring: Michael Thangadurai, Reshmi Menon, Sampath Raj
Director: Dharani Dharan
Producer: Sudharshan Vembutty
Banner: Square Stone Films
Music: Sudharshan M Kumar
Starring: Michael Thangadurai, Reshmi Menon, Sampath Raj
Director: Dharani Dharan
Producer: Sudharshan Vembutty
Banner: Square Stone Films
Music: Sudharshan M Kumar
Debutant Dharani Dharan directed
"Burma", which is about carjacking, could have easily been an excellent
film with its interesting premise and an equally exciting non-linear
narrative.
It focuses on three parallel stories
interconnected by a car. Just when you start to enjoy the film's truly
offbeat presentation, the problem begins! Audiences are randomly
introduced to a few characters whose presence is not appreciated till a
point when it's too late. Nevertheless, "Burma" is still a reasonably
good watch with some decent performances.
Burma alias Paramanandan is an aspiring
carjacker who works under Guna, who is known to the best in the business
of illegal seizure of vehicles. Burma and his sidekick Boomer risk
their lives and seize vehicles for Guna for a pittance. They decide to
request for a raise in pay, but things don't pan out as planned. So they
double-cross Guna, and take over the business.
Burma is in love and he has plans to
settle down, but he's not financially stable. He lands an opportunity to
change all that. He has to seize 28 vehicles for a local financier. He
signs up for the job and starts seizing vehicles one by one, and within
no time, he has seized 27 vehicles (you really wonder if carjacking is
so easy). When Burma gets his hands on the last vehicle, a high-end
luxury SUV, his life goes Topsy-turfy.
There are two other stories running
parallel to this. While the first one is about a gang that plans to rob a
security van carrying ATM money worth crores, the second is about
another gang that plans to rob from this gang.
The high-end luxury SUV interconnects
these three stories in such a way that you know the director likes to
experiment. And his efforts are laudable.
He also avoids all the common cinematic
cliches that are often used in Tamil cinema. For instance, the hero and
heroine don't break into a song to prove that they are in love or
there's no back-story that explains how they fell in love. We know
they're in love because they're introduced as a couple. These are some
of the pluses of "Burma", and that's what makes it instantly likable.
But these few reasons aren't enough to
engage audiences. Dharani uses the narrative style of Guy Richie films,
but what he misses out is the deft execution style of the latter.
I wished the characters had been better
etched. There's not a single character you root for because there's so
much of confusion around them. Even the heroine, who comes from a
respectable household, joins hands with the hero in carjacking. We are
forced to understand that she's doing it out of love, but the real
reason is that she wants him to make money so that he could convince her
father for marriage.
The performances are satisfying, but you
wish Sampath and Atul had stronger roles as they are the most popular
faces in the cast. "Burma" should have ideally been high on comedy
because it's important for a film that completely relies on its almost
unfamiliar cast. There are a few funny dialogues, but they aren't enough
to keep you entertained. The music is fairly experimental, but for one
promo song used exclusively for commercial reasons.

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