Bramman (2014)

Think of Pasupathy's cinema-crazy character in Veyyil. Now, take Pasupathy's character from Kuselan, and make this character as the one who has to go and meet his childhood friend, who is now a celebrity. Merge these two characters together and voila, you have Sasikumar's character in Bramman. He plays Siva, a man who has a fascination for cinema since childhood and runs a rundown movie theatre in Coimbatore. Screening the latest releases is an unaffordable proposition for him and so, along with his friend Nandhu, he shows older films of the same stars or with the same titles (Rajini's Billa instead of Ajith's, Friends instead of Nanban). But success eludes him. He falls in love with Gayathri (Lavanya), a college student. With his theatre in financial trouble and facing the prospect of being shut down for good, he goes to Chennai to meet his childhood friend Madankumar ( Naveen Chandra), who is now a successful film director, and seek his help. How this pan out forms the plot of this listless melodrama that tries to be a paean to both films and friendship. Ever since he dazzled us with his debut, Subramaniapuram, Sasikumar's career has been one of diminishing returns and the blame should squarely lie with the director-actor, who has become more concerned with projecting himself as a mass hero, despite trying to convince us otherwise. This film even features a scene where a character asks 'Nee enna periya hero-va' and Sasikumar retorts 'Naan ennikkume appadi sonnadhilla'. If it was the rustic ruffian archetype in his previous release Kutti Puli, here, he takes on a lover boy avatar in the first half, and gets back to his by-now familiar natpu philosophizing in the second half. That is not necessarily bad, but Socrates's script is so uninspiring and his staging very TV serial-like that even an interesting development (Siva goes to an office to meet Kumar and ends up with the offer of directing a film) feels monotonous. Even the romantic track plays out in an oft-seen manner, with Siva wooing Gayathri in the company of Nandhu, and Santhanam does his usual job of providing the wisecracks to keep us mildly entertained.