Custody

Custody, directed by Venkat Prabhu, is an entirely soulless movie amid huge expectations. The story follows a police officer who is assigned to take a criminal to court but the police department wants the criminal dead. The wafer-thin storyline sounded interesting on paper but the writing has ruined the execution. The writing was loosely written and it did not make sense as a whole. The screenplay has made the film go even worse, prolonging the movie. As the movie continued, the film was creating more boredom. The flashback episode was written cliche and made the film predictable. The direction went utterly wrong, despite having decent expectations of the director. The performances were decent with Aravind Swamy's performance being the best. The only highlight of the film was the action sequences, especially the underwater and police station sequences, which were stylishly designed. The music was not composed well and was not suited to the script at all. The production value was decent for the movie. Overall, the film is a lackluster film not leaving much to watch.

You have to admire the obvious talent and the unabashed gratuitous enjoyment of so many genres merged together with momentary comedic relief and themes for the first hour that will make you chuckle.

The leads do a nice job with delivery of comedic script and choreography.

Custody is worth your money to gain some worldly perspective of cerebrated talent and art.

Yet, the producer and director could certainly have derived three works of art from all they have to work with here.

Custody is a gumbo of entertainment that is palatable and fun for a bit but could have been enjoyed and consumed more easily had a few ingredients been saved for separate additional efforts.

Maybe the weakest work from VP till date. Even his earlier flop movies at least had some kind of half baked content in them. But 'Custody' has nothing new to offer. I felt bored all along and very difficult to sit through.

The only thing that stood out for me is the cinematography. The water sequences are good and I am sure the makers must have gone through a lot of challenging situations to bring this output, but, what's the point in trying all these unique film making ideas without a proper story.

Chay did his best but the character itself is very ordinary. In fact all the characters in this movie are just ordinary.

Plot is very thin and routine with no conflict among the characters.

I don't know if VP got confused in dealing a bilingual or if he is genuinely out of ideas, but it didn't feel like a VP film at all.

Overall, a disappointing movie. Forgettable.

RATED 5/10 Language: Tamil Source: Amazon Prime

With this cast and masala story, this could be the block buster one. But it failed miserably as a whole. Mainly because of the very poor narration and take the logic holes as granted, especially the dam fight and exhibition scenes.

Surprisingly I can see the "Saroja" Venkat Prabu on the Mortuary van dialog sequence. He utilised full and full of Aravind Swamy and Keerthi in that scene. It was so lovable to watch that scene.

But after that he failed to keep the track and confused between the mass heroism and entertainment.... Finally it become like a 80's masala movie and the art work helped much to make it look much worst....

The essence of this film can be summarised in a line delivered by Chay to Jiiva, "These serious lines are not fitting for you... You follow the normal, jolly route that works for you". If VP follows this, the director will be happier.

The problem in this film is that all twists and turns are normal, easily predictable and cliched. At least, the film makes you sweat with the nail-biting tension running throughout the film. Naga-chaitanya was given due respect, and a lot of mass build-up scenes with effects. So, we cannot say Andhra-Tamil concept was a flaw.

The heroine is a great addition to the film, with her own complex equations brought into the dynamics. Aravind Swamy's complex witty character is a welcome breeze in this otherwise intense film. Ramki's swag with an army machine gun also makes quite a scene in a tense turn.

However, all scenes give us a feel that we have already seen these somewhere else. Jiiva's character is in particular one-dimensional, with a foolhardy nature. With such a low situational awareness, how could he become a cop?! (Not noticing hazards falling in a chaotic site). Maybe this explains why the cops were so weak in this movie. One welcome break is that Premji somehow works as a villain with a disgusting, vile presence. (The politicians were like jokers in the film. Sarath's character was at least demonic in his smoking scenes. The car driver who tries to give a lift, but lusts after the heroine though - could he get any sillier?)

We have to admit that one major blunder was to let go of Aravind Swamy's character in the end, just for the sake of innovation. The following scenes were even more disastrous. With better writing, and perhaps some more character depth to all roles, this could have been different. Still, if one has nothing better to do, one can watch this film for the unique 90's style filmmaking.