Social media dangers
MOVIE REVIEW: IRUMBA THIRAI RATING: 7/10 REVIEWER: Fakir Hassen
DIRECTOR PS Mithran tries to send out messages about the challenges that the ever-burgeoning use of social media poses as international hackers steal identities and defraud people’s bank accounts.
It may strike a chord with those of us who receive enticing messages everyday about having won huge prizes or getting details from false lawyers about long-lost relatives who have left us a fortune somewhere abroad, with those who fall prey by reacting to them finding themselves in serious financial trouble.
Although Mithran does fictionalise some of these dangers, he does so in a realistic way – enough to make the viewer leave the cinema with a heightened sense of thinking twice before giving details online which can easily be misused, even on Facebook or WhatsApp.
Kathiravan (Vijay) is a short-tempered army trainer who falls victim to one such scam and launches a one-man battle against the perpetrator, who has defrauded hundreds of Indians by dragging them into loan situations with banks and then clearing out their accounts.
The culprit, revealed only after the interval, is a hacker with highly sophisticated tools known as White Devil, is the alter ego of highly respected businessman and philanthropist Sathyamoorthi (Arjun).
The cat and mouse game that follows is a bit too long, but Mithran does largely succeed in keeping the suspense going.
Unfortunately, though, one trap that he falls into, like so many other directors, is the “superhero style”: the unarmed hero, single-handedly fighting off more than a dozen heavily-armed thugs, several times in this film.
The female interest is Samantha, playing Rathi Devi, a psychologist tasked with treating Kathiravan for anger management, who eventually falls in love with him and eventually assists him.