Vikram Vedha movie Review

The best Tamil film of the year has arrived .#VikramVedha

Before the introduction of the so-called villain of the movie, the movie is all black and white.

Vikram (played sincerely by Madhavan) is a honest and ruthless lead of an 'encounter' police team who believes that there are only two kinds of people - right and wrong.

He sincerely believes that just by looking at the eyes, he can know whether the guy opposite to him is a criminal or not.

He is madly in love with a lawyer whom he ends up marrying. Their love story is shown starting with a meetup scene which his friend and colleague Simon arranges where Vikram walks off saying he does not like lawyers. But, they later find their common interest in a bar ordering 'whiskey on the rocks'. This scene is very much the touch of writer-director duo Gayatri and Pushkar who are wife and husband in real life.

Then walks in the notorious gangster Vedha (played brilliantly by Vijay Sethupathi) for whom Vikram has been planning an elaborate encounter. This introduction scene of Vedha can be categorised under 'underplayed mass' scene and is one of the fascinating introduction scenes in recent times.

Vedha starts narrating a story to Vikram about his personal life and this is the scene where the black and white shades start to blur. The black is not black anymore. The black also seem to have its side of the story. The wrong guy does the right things sometimes for his brother. And at the end of the story is a question (which is again referenced at the end in a brilliant climax).

The second story blurs the gap even more.

And at the end, there is no more black and white. Vikram aided by Vedha gets a holistic picture of whats happening around him and his world of black and white simply crumbles in one of the best climax scenes in Tamil films.

One of the dialogues which Vedha utters in the climax is probably the essence of the film. He asks Vikram whether he can see the line between good and bad now or whether he can see only a circle with no lines in between where everyone involved is standing.

The writing of the film is simply brilliant and is the reason why the film clicks. All the characters are well-defined and have well-rounded arcs. The standout performer is Vijay Sethupathi who gets his swag and witty lines right. He hits the right notes in the scenes where he imparts his wisdom to Vikram. There are metaphorical references in most scenes like some line dividing Vikram and Vedha everytime they speak and also how the attire of Vikram/Vedha changes from white/black in the initial scenes to more intermediary shades of grey.

All in all, its a great comeback film from the Pushkar-Gayatri duo and the best movie of 2017 so far. It would take some effort for the films releasing this year to better this.