Oru Kidayin Karunai Manu

Amidst the gush of releases intended as entertainers week after week, movies like Oru Kidayin Karunai Manu ('Mercy petition of a scapegoat'?) manages to entertain with some wholly organic jocularity and drama. A profoundly simple tale that revolves around a death and a group of villagers who are unfortunately entailed in it, what strikes a chord with this flick is the humongous but well detailed casting and characterization of the village folk, whose camaraderie and verbal jousts liven things up right till the climax. Drawing much from day to day life, satire is a major facet as the movie unfolds through the eyes of the sacrificial lamb taken to the family deity of the protagonist. The newlywed lead chap with his wife and clan are started out on a truck to their family deity's temple for an oblation fare. On the remote thoroughfare they chance upon a mishap, and a local is dead. How the goat becomes the mute beholder in the dark comedy and tumult that ensues is what pretty much makes the rest of the proceedings. With a bunch of hardly known faces and drawing on their candidly facetious sub-plots, the director has done well to extract some acting ample for a commercial movie, the earthy Tamil dialect and hard to understand slang adding to the freshness of the proceedings.