The serial killer genre is saturated with films and web series delving into the psyche of a person who takes the lives of the innocent seemingly at random. By now, the audience that has a liking towards such films (such as this reviewer) is educated enough about why such crimes take place and how the criminal is eventually caught. To make an investigative thriller that has you holding your breath for a good part of the film is therefore quite an accomplishment – and it’s especially impressive when it comes from a debut filmmaker.
Vignesh Raja’s Por Thozhil (co-written with Alfred Prakash) translates to the ‘art of war’. In an important scene in the film, a senior officer tells the trainee that to understand a criminal, it isn’t enough to know the case details. One has to view him as an artist – only then do the subjectivities involved in the crime emerge. Why does he kill his victims in a specific position? How does it make him feel? What is the war within him that led to this ‘art’?
Sarath Kumar excels as the grim and robotic Lokanathan, a senior officer at the Crime Branch who is forced to mentor Prakash (a confident Ashok Selvan), a trainee wet behind the ears. Prakash is introduced as a young man who scares easily, and he’s part of a large and loving family. In contrast, there’s nothing we know about Lokanathan, and as the film unfolds, we realise that this is a deliberate writing choice. The economy of the moment in which we confront Lokanathan’s past is inversely proportional to its emotional impact, and Sarath Kumar is magnificent in how he carries the scene.
Their first case together is a series of murders in Trichy. All the victims are women but there is no evidence of sexual assault. The third corner in their team is Veena (Nikhila Vimal), a technical assistant. Though not a big role, Nikhila makes her presence felt. There’s a frisson of attraction between Prakash and Veena, but thankfully, it doesn’t divert us from the investigation. In fact, the taut screenplay follows the Chekhov's gun principle, and never gets boring. It must also be mentioned that though the victims are all women, the violence isn’t voyeuristically filmed. There are no ‘shock value’ scenes where the camera lingers unnecessarily to register the horror of the crime.
The challenge in writing an investigative thriller is not to pull a rabbit out of the hat in the final stretch and label them as the killer. There are several films that follow this approach and they’re rarely satisfying because the audience doesn’t become involved in solving the crime. The thrill of the hunt is one-sided. It is much harder to write a script where the reveals keep coming. There is no rabbit, but the director must function like a magician who provides enough distractions so we don’t see the full truth until he’s ready to present it. In Ram Kumar’s Ratsasan (2018), for instance, this is literally how the director chooses to introduce the killer early in the screenplay – as a magician onstage. But we register the significance of the scene much later.
Por Thozhil packs in its clues and red herrings in several suspenseful sequences that build the tension with an effective sound design. My pick is the scene when a nervous cop interrogates a suspect – he’s in a car at a railway crossing – and the camera drifts from the inside of the car to the officer’s face and the stretch of road behind them where Lokanathan waits, directing the officer through his earpiece. The rush of the train as it passes them is startling because we are so focused on the suspect’s answer, almost as if we can feel the beating pulse of the officer. The veteran actor who plays the suspect (naming him would be a spoiler) is fantastic, bringing the right amount of creepy and calm to the role.
If there’s anything that could have been done better, it is a vital link that is insufficiently established through a hurried flashback. While we understand the whys of the story, the hows are not as fleshed out – and this is a gripe in a film that otherwise shines in its writing. It needed more time, and possibly more rounded characters than the convenient stereotype of a lustful woman at its centre.
Por Thozhil does come with a ‘message’ for the audience, but it isn’t spelt out in neon as is the case with several Tamil films. It’s subtle and allows us to arrive at the realisation instead of drilling it into our brains, and thank god for that. That’s what the art of cinema ought to be, and Por Thozhil gets it.
Watch the trailer of Por Thozhil here:
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the producers or any other members of its cast and crew.
Sowmya Rajendran writes on gender, culture, and cinema. She has written over 25 books, including a nonfiction book on gender for adolescents. She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s Bal Sahitya Puraskar for her novel Mayil Will Not Be Quiet in 2015. Views expressed are the author's own.