By Vivek Ramz

Esthell Entertainers' Sattam Oru Iruttarai with the tagline 'A war for love' released without much fanfare. The film is the remake of S.A.Chandrasekar's yesteryear film with the same name starring Vijayakanth in the lead.

The original received critical acclaim and went to become blockbuster. After that, it got remade in Hindi as “Andha Kanoon” with Rajinikanth, later in Telugu as 'Chattaniki Kallu Levu' with Chiranjeevi and both the versions received well by the audience. After almost 30 years, SAC's grand daughter Sneha Britto remakes it once again but fails big time.

What's it about?

The film begins with Vijay (Thaman) killing two men back to back in a mysterious way. Her sister, ACP (Reema Sen) takes over the case and starts investigating them. She founds that Vijay is the culprit and inquires him. After initial displeasure, he confesses that he killed both of them as they murdered his lover, Jassi (Pia) previously. He goes on to challenge her to get him arrested after finding proper evidence. Irked by his behaviour, Reema throws him out of her house. Vijay stays in his friend's (Bindhu Madhavi) house and plans to murder the third guy (Radha Ravi) who's involved in his lover's death. How Vijay kills Ravi and whether Reema arrests her brother or not forms the rest of the story.

The premise is interesting and even relatable to current time as Indian law has lot of loopholes and the message for change is much appreciated too. But where SOI fails is in the half baked script and the poor execution of the same by newcomer Sneha Britto. She didn't change the storyline much and in fact lost it completely without adapting to modern day sensibilities. Some more concentration during the scripting stage would have saved the film to some extent.

The film never connects with the audience leaving one disappointed throughout the film. The screenplay is so slow and tests your patience. Logic goes for a toss and as a result most of the scenes look unintentionally funny. And songs out of nowhere didn't help the cause any further. Even the comedy part which usually is the saving grace for many small films, falls flat here as unrelated typical one liners mouthed by Thaman's friends didn't gel with the plot.

It makes sense now why Vikram Prabhu and Karthika opted out of the film after shooting few scenes. Characterization is poor and so is casting. Thaman is not fit and fails miserably in the role of angry young man, his difficulty to emote can be clearly seen.

Pia's character Jassi in the flashback scenes on which the entire plot revolves around, is poorly etched and she did okay. Though Bindu Madhavi has more screen presence than Pia, there is absolutely no effect of her character in the film. Reema Sen is the only exception of the lot and performed well. Veterans Radha Ravi and Suresh are wasted in minuscule roles.

Vijay Antony has given his usual template songs and music is average. Cinematography by Rajkumar is pretty bad and it gives serial like feel to the movie and Rajeesh's editing not upto the mark.

What to do?

Overall, SOI is poorly remade without any soul and lacks the punch of the original. Give it a miss!

Rating – 1.5/5