Love on the wane. An uneventful road trip-turned-nightmare. These are two summaries that should be in separate films, but somehow end up being a part of just one, in writer-director Magizh Thirumeni’s action thriller Vidaamuyarchi, which translates to persistence.
The film takes the skeleton of Jonathan Mostow’s 1997 cult film Breakdown – in which a couple whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere cross paths with people whose helpfulness masks a more sinister agenda – and reinterprets it to make its audience want to root for its two leads.
Here, the couple are Arjun (Ajith Kumar) and Kayal (Trisha Krishnan), who flag an incoming truck with seemingly friendly faces – a husband-wife duo Deepika (Regina Cassandra) and Rakshith (Arjun Sarja) – when their car breaks down in the middle of a highway. Kayal volunteers to hitch a ride with the couple to a pit stop so she can call a tow truck, kickstarting a domino-effect and what essentially becomes Arjun’s daytime nightmare – Kayal seemingly disappears, and nobody knows her whereabouts.
While the thrilling ride is the primary narrative driver, there’s so much more to love here. The movie begins with, and earnestly commits to, a tale of a marriage on the decline, which is where we really get to know why our leads are taking an almost nine-hour long journey in the first place.
The film’s beating heart, of course, is the twisty action-thriller it turns into, with cinematographer Om Prakash’s blend of gorgeous vistas and zany set-piece camera working perfectly in tandem with the phenomenal action choreography, N B Srikanth's deft editing and composer Anirudh Ravichander’s groovy score. It’s clear Thirumeni knows exactly what he wants on screen and his style-is-substance filmmaking language balances hyper kinetic shots with an earnest commitment to every emotion present in the story.
Even when an abruptly early inclusion of a song-and-dance routine threatens to break the flow, literally five minutes into the film’s runtime, the narrative is thankfully nimble enough to pick itself back up and re-engage its audience.
Krishnan and Kumar are phenomenal, and their well-acted turns give their characters a strong, emotionally compelling core. But it's Kumar's immense star power that carries the film, balancing the quiet moments with the bombastic so convincingly you’d elect to suspend your disbelief in portions where he turns into a trained assassin with zero precedent.
The overall winner here, however, is Thirumeni, who helms a glossy big-budget thrill-a-minute joyride, and gives everything a chance to shine, from its lead star’s screen presence and the gritty action sequences to the excellent character work and focused storytelling.
Despite a stumble or two, Vidaamuyarchi, true to its title, persists, and comes out a winner.
