Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal is a con job of a film, and I mean this only as a compliment. If good cinema were a satisfying form of deception, Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal is among its better examples. From the film’s alarmingly mundane beginning to its hilarious twist at the end concerning a police officer, this film’s singular objective is to be a step ahead of you. And I loved that this is thematically in keeping with what its main characters do for a living. The film takes a while to warm up, and while you are waiting for this to happen, it’s almost frightfully blasé. A typical hero type (Siddharth, played by Dulquer) and a hero-friend type (Kaallis, played by Rakshan) have the film commencing with a pool party song. Soon, Siddharth, by chance, meets a heroine type (Meera, played by Ritu Varma), as she, perhaps having just watched Anniyan, begins delivering a moral lecture to a shopkeeper about the value of a single rupee. Needless to say, Siddharth, who’s gawking at her as Suriya watches Asin save children from a puddle in Ghajini, falls in love. By around this time, I was positively petrified. What about this film had convinced Dulquer to return to Tamil cinema? Unknown to me, of course, director Desingh Periyasamy had me exactly where he wanted—right in the centre of the film’s crosshairs. By the time the title flashes at the interval, you realise its true significance. I was glad for a terrific twist, but I was gladder still that Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal was far from the sort of film I thought it was shaping itself to be at the beginning.

Cast: Dulquer, Ritu Varma, Rakshan, Niranjani, Gautham Menon

Director: Desingh Periyasamy

Producer: Anto Joseph Film Company, Viacom18 Motion Pictures

Though the film begins with a short animation to establish that this is Dulquer’s 25th film, this is hardly a film in love with its hero. To the actor’s credit, he seems secure in his reluctance to take singular control over the material. This means that all four main characters, Siddharth, Kaallis, Meera, and Shreya (Niranjani Ahathian) are allowed time and space to impose themselves on the material. There’s a lovely little scene in which Kaallis takes pride in being a loyal sidekick of Siddharth, and somehow, this has the effect of making him less so. Kaallis also gets the best love scene in the film. A goofy comic presence who’s seemingly unemotional, he’s forced into a period of separation from Shreya. In a scene which is deep without striving too hard to be, he observes that he had somehow become accustomed to being dominated by her, that he’s now missing her presence. Among heroes who profess their love with total conviction, it’s refreshing when, amid all this fragility, he tentatively offers, “Love panniten pola?” While on Kaallis, be also sure to observe his selection of amusing t-shirts, which generally indicate his mood. During a particularly sad moment, his shirt reads, “Singatha saachitaangale.”

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For the remainder of this review (and there’s a lot more left, I assure you), please visit https://www.cinemaexpress.com/reviews/tamil/2020/feb/28/kannum-kannum-kollaiyadithaal-movie-review-dulquer-salmaan-ritu-varma-star-in-a-clever-film-that-s-17278.html