Category
Film
Tv show
Documentary
Stand-up Comedy
Short Film
View All
Genres
Action
Adventure
Animation
Biography
Comedy
Crime
Documentary
Drama
Family
Fantasy
Film-Noir
Game-Show
History
Horror
Kids
Music
Musical
Mystery
News
Reality-TV
Political
Romance
Sci-Fi
Social
Sports
Talk-Show
Thriller
War
Western
View All
Language
Hindi
Telugu
Tamil
Malayalam
Kannada
Abkhazian
Afar
Afrikaans
Akan
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Aragonese
Armenian
Assamese
Avaric
Avestan
Aymara
Azerbaijani
Bambara
Bashkir
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bhojpuri
Bislama
Bosnian
Breton
Bulgarian
Burmese
Cantonese
Catalan
Chamorro
Chechen
Chichewa; Nyanja
Chuvash
Cornish
Corsican
Cree
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Divehi
Dutch
Dzongkha
English
Esperanto
Estonian
Ewe
Faroese
Fijian
Finnish
French
Frisian
Fulah
Gaelic
Galician
Ganda
Georgian
German
Greek
Guarani
Gujarati
Haitian; Haitian Creole
Haryanvi
Hausa
Hebrew
Herero
Hiri Motu
Hungarian
Icelandic
Ido
Igbo
Indonesian
Interlingua
Interlingue
Inuktitut
Inupiaq
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kalaallisut
Kanuri
Kashmiri
Kazakh
Khmer
Kikuyu
Kinyarwanda
Kirghiz
Komi
Kongo
Korean
Kuanyama
Kurdish
Lao
Latin
Latvian
Letzeburgesch
Limburgish
Lingala
Lithuanian
Luba-Katanga
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Maltese
Mandarin
Manipuri
Manx
Maori
Marathi
Marshall
Moldavian
Mongolian
Nauru
Navajo
Ndebele
Ndebele
Ndonga
Nepali
Northern Sami
Norwegian
Norwegian Bokmål
Norwegian Nynorsk
Occitan
Ojibwa
Oriya
Oromo
Ossetian; Ossetic
Other
Pali
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Pushto
Quechua
Raeto-Romance
Romanian
Rundi
Russian
Samoan
Sango
Sanskrit
Sardinian
Serbian
Serbo-Croatian
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhalese
Slavic
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Sotho
Spanish
Sundanese
Swahili
Swati
Swedish
Tagalog
Tahitian
Tajik
Tatar
Thai
Tibetan
Tigrinya
Tonga
Tsonga
Tswana
Turkish
Turkmen
Twi
Uighur
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Venda
Vietnamese
Volapük
Walloon
Welsh
Wolof
Xhosa
Yi
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zhuang
Zulu
View All
Release year
2024
1900
Rating
Must Watch
Good
Passable
Poor
Skip
Yet to Review
View All
Platform
View All
Search

Soorarai Pottru Review – A Well-Intentioned Underdog Drama With Excellent Leads

By Binged Bureau - Nov 12, 2020 @ 03:11 am
3 / 5
BOTTOM LINE: A Well-Intentioned Underdog Drama With Excellent Leads
Rating
3 / 5
Skin N Swear
No sequences with strong language or on-screen intimacy
Drama, Biography

What Is the Story About?

Soorarai Pottru Movie Review

The film revolves around Nedumaaran a.k.a Maara’s unrelenting quest to come up with a low-cost airline and make air travel accessible and affordable to the common man. After spending his initial years in the defence, several circumstances strengthen Maara’s resolve to launch an airline of his own. Maara is ridiculed, investors reject his proposals, there are bureaucratic delays, but his better half Sundari, a bakery shop owner herself, stands by him through his thick and thin and fends for the family. An entire village comes together to fund for his idea. However, Maara’s biggest roadblock is the aviation honcho Paresh Goswami who tries every dirty trick in the book to pin him down. Does Maara have it in him to rise again?

 

Performances?

Suriya’s emotive abilities need little introduction. He underplays Maara to perfection and presents the vulnerability of the character in his weaker moments so well. Occasionally though, the actor, in terms of his slang and body language, appears a tad too stiff, sophisticated and urbanised to play a Madurai lad. Aparna Balamurali is the film’s biggest surprise. While she was wonderful in Sarvam Thaala Mayam before, Soorarai Pottru gives her an opportunity to play a woman of strength who also has her tomboyish streaks. The sequences showcasing her unconventional rapport with her husband are a delight to watch.

The supporting cast – comprising Karunas, Kaali Venkat, Urvashi, Mohan Babu – is incredibly effective despite the so-so characterisation. Paresh Rawal’s role is rather poorly written and his dialogues in the film sound more like warnings and less like conversations with the other person.

Soorarai Pottru Movie Review

Analysis

Soorarai Pottru, the title of director Sudha Kongara’s latest feature, loosely translates to ‘hail the warrior’. The filmmaker ambitiously projects that her protagonist bears the spirit of a modern-day warrior, who overcomes every roadblock in the journey towards his nearly-impossible dream. Like the director’s earlier film Irudhi Suttru/Saala Khadoos, Soorarai Pottru too is a rags-to-riches, underdog story. The journey of a road-side fish seller becoming a national-level boxer in Irudhi Suttru worked wonders with its rootedness to the setting despite its implausible premise. However, Soorarai Pottru, though high on ambition, isn’t as impactful.

The sincere intent apart, Soorarai Pottru is overly simplistic and the struggles of the protagonist Maara feel superficial. Maara’s motive to launch his airline could have been established with greater emotional connect – the decision feels more instinctive than well-thought-out. The film doesn’t focus on the homework that Maara does to launch the airline. His ascent is narrated in broad strokes. The comparisons between having a masala dosa at a tiffin centre and a star hotel to justify his idea (of a low-cost airline affordable to the common man) sound a little too farfetched.

The film glorifies the common man, the poor and conveniently paints the rich businessman as evil and scheming.  Maara is someone whose intentions are beyond doubt while it’s always the Jaz airlines owner Paresh Goswami who is waiting to crush his underdog opponent. And if this wasn’t enough, the sequence where Maara grabs an opportunity to meet the Indian president for bureaucratic help to launch his airline sticks out like a sore thumb.  There are too many cinematic liberties that don’t make you root for Maara.

Soorarai Pottru Movie Review

Surprisingly, Sundari, Maara’s better half, is a character that works better. Her husband ridicules her idea of launching a bakery, but the bakery pays the bills when his plans don’t fructify initially. She writes her business proposals, lends money to her husband when he’s bankrupt and is the same person who feeds him fondly at home. The well-written character is a lovely example of a modern-day family woman with an identity, one who supports her husband without compromising on her dreams. Maara and Sundari are characters similar in more ways than one – unpredictable, instinctive and entrepreneurs at heart. 

A film’s aftertaste is largely dependent on its climax – Soorarai Pottru’s advantage lies there. The outing starts on a sluggish note, flutters in the middle portions but finds its rhythm in the ending – better late than never though. Soorarai Pottru is technically superb, boasts of wonderful performances, but as a film, it’s neither exceedingly bland nor supremely engaging. The inspiring story certainly deserved a better ending note than a ‘one-time watch’.

 

Soorarai Pottru Movie Review

 Music and Other Departments?

G V Prakash’s songs – raw and rustic (though not outstanding) – are weaved well into the narrative and have a conversational tone that doesn’t obstruct the film’s flow. The background score does justice in lending impetus to the protagonist’s emphatic journey. In terms of writing, Soorarai Pottru lacks emotional depth. The screenplay of the film isn’t its strength, too dry/wordy at times and doesn’t engage consistently either. Niketh Bommireddy’s cinematography gives the enriching visual palette that the story deserves, though the CG is slightly tacky at times.

Soorarai Pottru Movie Review

Highlights?

Strong performances

Good story

Technically strong

Drawbacks?

Overlong, dull writing and characterisation

Many cinematic liberties

Sweeping generalisations

Did I Enjoy It?

Yes

Will You Recommend It?

Yes

‘Soorarai Pottru’ Review by Binged Bureau 

We’re hiring!

We are hiring two full-time junior to mid-level writers with the option to work remotely. You need to work a 5-hour shift and be available to write. Interested candidates should email their sample articles to [email protected]. Applications without a sample article will not be considered.