Mafia: Chapter 1

You know those essays we used had to write in some point of our educational career. The answer to the question could with just one sentence but in order to look smart and hard working we build up our paper with pages and pages of unnecessary garbage. Once we run out of garbage idea, we would finally reveal that one sentence answer. Mafia is basically the movie version of that essay. The director builds a whole movie full of slow-motion scenes of guns loading and biceps that are completely pointless and the one sentence answer is the grand climax suspense. And believe me I am a huge fan of revelation suspense movies. Like those are literally my most favorite kind climax suspense, but as much as these revelations are exciting to see the all the excitement depends on how intriguing the scenes that lead to the big revelation are. If the scenes that lead to the revelation have no steam then the revelation is basically pointless because it is going to have no impact on the audience. Director Karthick Naren completely fails to create and connection with the audience whatsoever. We end up just sitting there like idles with no emotions like fear, anger, or excitement (all of which are very important for a successful thriller) not overcoming us. This led to me reacting with just an "oh" to the great climax revelation. In fact the villain had to praise himself powerful because the character created for him is one-dimensional. However, I wouldn't say the movie was a complete waste. I really enjoyed staring at Arun Vijay's well-built body and hairstyle along with Prassanna and Priya Bhavni Shankar. I went in with huge expectations because of D16. I thought it would be similar to Vikram Vedha but I guess if you go in with no expectation it could be a decent one time watch.

As Director Karthick Karen made us all sit in the edge of the seat with his previous thriller movie D16, Expectations for this movie was high and the classy look of Arun Vijay and Prassana made it further more fascinating..Fans were looking for something like Narcos but to be frank the movie had actually just 3 scenes which was dragged because of the slow motion shots which was just irritating after a point and the bgms were misplaced in many places..Apart from that,The movie is quiet good..All the actors have done well especially Prassana but he hasn't given much space to show his full potential..The best part of the movie is the climax which sets up for the sequel.. Overall if you are a fan of action movies,you can watch it but don't set your expectations high..

Before watching this movie , I have watched it's "Teasers" and some interviews of Karthick Naren ( Director of this film ) and also I have watched Dhuruvangal pathinaaru, his previous film. After doing all this, I kept my expectations higher. And the movie begins with an action scene in some multi storey building, as the action sequence builds up over a staircase , the camera angle changes to Top angle and moves downwards through the gap between steps and also the camera simultaneously rotates.... OK all I want to say is that it gives us some sort of illusion. Keeping this in my mind, I'm going with the flow of the film. And our protagonist is Aryan (Arun Vijay) working under the Narcotics control Bureau struggles to catch the head of the drug dealer's network after trying so many methods to find him, but these are all shown to us in a manner of some voice overs and some comic relief scenes. He is also in a relationship with his fellow teammate Sathya (Priya Bhavani Shankar). And the film also has very many buildups for the Antagonist(FOR CHAPTER 1) named DK(Prasanna) and also we get an introduction scene for DK same as the introduction scene for the Protagonist. As the story folds up Aryan loses two of his persons who knows the details of DK and one of the dead leaves the total details of DK. With the help of these details and some fieldwork of Aryan and his teammates, whether they are able to catch DK ??? This is the plot and that has a major twist at the climax. After watching the film,I had a different scenario which had never happened before...because, the film seems to be very short but it is elongated. What I want to say is that the film has a story which could be told within half time of its screenplay but it is elongated to get their predetermined run time or they wanted to make it as a "Two or multi chapter film". Although it has a very little story to tell us ,they can at least add some more scenes about the failures faced by Aryan in search of DK, instead of making a movie which takes place in a 5 days screenplay pattern. Or they could have made some more cat and mouse game between those two main characters before reaching climax which would have satisfied their motive of creating sequels of movies or may be a "Franchise" (the director's view on this film) and also satisfied us. We can wish anything, but what we got is a simple story OR Half story of an "unknown film" which is elongated by with numerous glorification scenes of the two main characters and by a series of action set pieces with "ultra slow motion". After these thoughts, I thought that the "illusion shot" (as I pre-mentioned at the beginning of the review) meant to be the illusion of the "Short film being projected as a Feature film" OR it may indicate the illusion experienced by the protagonist ( at the climax), btw who knows :-) I would not say it is a very bad film, but it could be made better by improving the writing area of the film. The film also had many well shot closeups and also closeups on action sequences which is not that good. Colour gradients are used well to indicate the intense situations and the difference between the two main characters. While talking about background score which is good and special mention about the cow-boy kinda theme music during the revelation of the character of Aryan. And so finally, I may or may not be wrong about my views of the film. But I would not say it is a bad film before it's sequels get released.

Boring regular story with nothing brilliance in it.not even a single scene with intelligence.better watch it in OTT platforms.

Its a disappointment if you go with the expectation of D16 from Karthik Naren. Lucky that this movie doesnt have much Love-Sentiments scenes, However this movie is filled with lots of slow motion repeated shots which is a big turn off.

Runtime is around 2 hours, however the movie content is only about an hour. 1 hour is added due to extensive use of Slow motions in every scenes.

Apart from the last 15 minutes, nothing goes interesting in this. Story, Dialogues, Acting is totally boring. Not a bit of Karthik Naren touch in this. Not even one casting went good. Arun vijay exists with his pale face and slow motion of him walking, holstering gun, loading and unloading gun, takes 5 minutes to say one simple dialogue. Prasanna is not upto the mark for a Mafia boss, even with suits, cigars, smokey scenes no impressions created. Priyabhavani Shankar - no comments, no idea why she is in this movie.

Even if you go with low expectations, you wont enjoy the movie. This is just a chapter one, atleast some interesting story line only generated in this movie on the climax. Hence I really hope Chapter 2 will be better than Chapter 1

5 out 10