Let me just say I am thankful that the film ended there. He adds that this wasn't the end and that he had a long journey ahead of him on this path. In the final few minutes, there’s a voiceover by Manickavel where he says every cop should decide whether they want to work for the public or the government. In addition, the film is additionally bogged down by its perennial lip-sync issues. One police officer wears a name tag covered in paper with his name written in blue ink. Just because he is a policeman, Manickavel has a never-ending supply of all kinds of gadgets. But it does not always translate on screen.
The actor tries to infuse the ‘cool yet ruthless’ vibe into the character.
Pon Manickavel sees Prabhudeva don the khaki for the first time, a change from the comedic, lighter roles he is known for. Not that this is done with nuance as well. Pon Manickavel feeds right into the vigilante model of justice with lines like, “Why do you need a warrant to hunt a rabid dog?”. With the increasing cases of custodial violence, several important voices, including Director Vetrimaaran, have acknowledged the need to question this narrative. And of course, every act of intimacy is prefaced with “Let’s make a mini Anbu and Manickam.” *shudders*įor long Tamil cinema has glorified the policeman and his arbitrary mode of vigilante justice. Her logic, “ Saptutu edhume solama poiteenga, idhu enna veeda hotel a?” (You left without saying anything. She is the kind of wife who calls her husband up just to ask how breakfast was. And to no surprise, the romance between Anbuarasi and Manickavel is exasperating. It is also probably the only universe where the mother of a victim screams at the police asking him to shoot the accused at the court. But Pon Manickavel’s universe is probably the only universe where an arrest on a #MeToo complaint is done so quickly in real life, they would have probably just dealt with a defamation case. Two cases of sexual violence have been commodified for emotion. The writing is so listless that all those unnecessary songs, including a tasteless dance number, seem like welcome breaks. New villains are introduced… the investigation goes on and on, and on. One of the suspects actually turns out to be an undercover cop working the same case (?). Soon they settle on Arjun K Maaran (Suresh Menon) as the next target and Manickavel decides to tail him. One murder leads to another with Pon Manickavel on the hunt for the criminal. Gun-expert Manickavel is called back to the force after his self-imposed hiatus to investigate the murder of a judge. And Pon Manickavel fails miserably to surprise us. So it's really about what happens, but how it happens. The thing about commercial cinema is, by now, you’re so familiar with the template. Similarly, when his wife Anbuarasi (Nivetha Pethuraj) is being shot at, Manickavel pounces in at the exact right moment to save. When the daughter of Manickavel’s (Prabhudeva) subordinate is threatened at knifepoint, you know he will storm at the last moment, right on cue, to save her from harm. The camera zooms on a murdered man, and a woman, who comes running out, begins wailing right on cue.
Pon Manickavel, Prabhudeva’s 50th film, is a film where a lot of things happen on cue.