Dharmadurai Movie

Review
Synopsis: A doctor
turns into an alcoholic,
and becomes an
embarrassment for his
brothers. What caused
this descent, and can he
redeem himself?
Review: The opening
minutes of Dharmadurai
bring to mind

Seenuramasamy's
previous released film
Neerparavai (the film
that he shot after that,
Idam Porul Yeval, is still
lying in the cans and
even gets referenced
here). Like the hero of
that film, the
protagonist of this one,
too, is an alcoholic. The
first time we see
Dharmadurai (Vijay
Sethupathi, solid), he is

at a local bar, and the

director shows us how
his oafish behaviour is a
constant source of
embarrassment to his
brothers (each one
named after the
Pandavas of the
Mahabharata), who even
plot to harm him
grievously to stop him
from maligning them
further. His mother,
Pandiyammal (Radikaa),

is the only one who

stands up for him, and
we get the sense that
there is some reason
behind Dharmadurai's
alcoholism.
But the director holds on
to that for quite a while,
instead choosing to
narrate the college days
of Dharma. We see his
gang of friends, which
includes Stella (Srushti

Dange) and Subhashini

(Tamannaah, who does a
commendable job
dubbing for herself), and
the two pine for him, the
former openly, and the
latter in silence. Then,
there is their saintly
professor Dr Kamaraj
(Rajesh), who keeps
urging them to treat the
profession as a service
and work in the villages.
And finally, we get the

reason for Dharma's

need to seek solace in
alcohol. We are
introduced to Anbuselvi
(Aishwarya Rajesh), a
worker, whom Dharma
falls in love with, and we
learn how, despite his
do-gooder nature, the
romance ends in
tragedy because of the
greed and regressive
attitude of his brothers.

Dharmadurai has a
great central conflict
how even a person with
good intentions can
become a liability for
someone else because
of those around him
but Seenuramasamy's
resolution of this conflict
feels unsatisfactory. The
director takes too long
to get into the story, and
uses a framing device
about a bag of cash that

Dharmadurai mistakenly
takes along with him
when he leaves home,
which gets his family
into trouble. This adds
some tension to the
initial scenes, but soon,
it is side-lined for the
campus scenes, which
come across as artificial.
And the redemption
angle is resolved
midway into the second
half, and we do not have

anything else to care for

after that. The director
fills the remaining time
with a less involving
sub-plot centred around
Dharma and Subha, and
brings in the matter of
the money again
through developments
that do not feel organic.
But the film does have
genuinely affecting
moments, and actors

like Aishwarya Rajesh

(once again typecast as
a poor woman), Radikaa
(confident), MS Bhaskar
(subtle) and Rajesh
(fantastic) enhance the
ordinary writing in many
of the scenes. The
repeated stressing of
the need for altruism
gets tiring at times, but
in these cynical times, it
does leave you with a
warm feeling. There are

quite a few moments

(like the entire segment
involving Anbuselvi) that
convey what this
director is capable of,
but the synthetic subplots pull the film down
and prevent it from
becoming the emotional
roller coaster that it
should have been.