Dhanush’s Maaran is riddled with cliches and lacks substance

Maaran, directed by filmmaker Karthick Naren, starts off with all the boring Tamil film cliches. When the male lead is a child, his father gets killed by goons; around the same time and while it is raining, his mother dies due to complications during childbirth. But she has delivered a baby before passing away. In a typical Tamil hero style from the late 80s or 90s, the boy raises his sister on his own. With many such generic scenes, the film proceeds in a very superficial manner, but director Karthik Naren of Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru fame has a trick or two up his sleeve that would make up for all of the initial torture (at least he thinks so.) But by the time he is ready to blow your mind, it is too late, and too little. 

Maaran stars actors Dhanush, Malavika Mohanan, Smruthi Venkat, Ramki Venkat, Mahendran and others. Maaran or Mathimaaran, played by actor Dhanush, is an investigative journalist, a brilliant one we are told; there are no actual scenes of his supposed intelligence. He gets hired at a news organisation over a bizarre competition of ‘likes’ over a tweet. And a song follows (if you think this is a cliche, read what happens next.) By the end of the song, Mathimaaran is a celebrated journalist with cover stories on him, as he has uncovered several illegal activities. (The song is perhaps a tribute to Suryavamsam, where Sarathkumar’s character becomes a millionaire by the end of a song.)

Malavika, playing the role of Tara, works in the same office. We do not know what exactly she does, but in one scene she is seen doing photography, so a photojournalist we can assume. Her character is poorly written. She has no role except to latch on to Dhanush wherever he goes (This is perhaps a tribute to Vijay and Keerthy Suresh’s Sarkar.) The scenes between the two actors are terrible.

There are no proper scenes about how they become close. Something was amiss… Only when I rewatched the trailer did I realise that many scenes between the pair have been deleted. Malavika’s acting is lousy and the awful lip-sync makes it worse. 

Smruthi Venkat (Swetha in the film) once again plays the role of a sister, after Mookuthi Amman. Though the scenes between Smruthi and Dhanush are superficial, she makes them look convincing with her performance.   

Director Ameer Sultan plays an important character in the film. Though he is shown as a good character, because he is a good father to his daughter, his actions and justifications make no sense.

Maaran, the investigative journalist, in a sting operation exposes the story of a politician played by Samuthirakani, who tries to rig the election by tampering with the Electronic Voting Machines. This explosive story gets him into trouble and how he manages to get out of it forms the main plot of the film.

With so many cliches and generic scenes in the film, I had already guessed the death of a character because it follows the regular trope of highlighting the character with a montage scene just before they get killed.  However, Naren cleverly deceives the audience and throws a shocking twist, and it makes sense why Maaran, who gets triggered at the sight of a fire due to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, overcomes it in the end. 

Unfortunately, until the third act, the film doesn’t have much to offer to retain the attention of the audience. There are no scenes which make you empathize with any character. Though Dhanush is a fine actor, even he cannot salvage this train-wreck of a film.

Dhanush, who had just recovered with Atrangi Re after the disastrous Jagame Thanthiram, delivers another poor outing with Maaran. And for Karthick Naren, this film joins the list of Mafia: Chapter 1.