Sivakarthikeyan’s campus tale is a formulaic but entertaining drama
Don Film Overview: Given that his stringent father (Samuthirakani), or as he describes him, the “sirappana tharamana villain” in his life wants him to study really hard, Chakaravarthi (Sivakarthikeyan), the protagonist of Don, decides that he’d fairly make a title for himself without actually finding out. The film is all about regardless of whether this young gentleman manages to determine out what he desires to do in life even though remaining in a soul-sucking environmental – an engineering college. Incorporating to his misfortune is Boominathan (SJ Suryah), a faculty member in the faculty, who is even additional of a disciplinarian than his father!
With this Santhosh Subramaniam-meets-Nanban established-up, debutant director Cibi Chakaravarthi would make it achievable for him to enjoy to equally the younger and older group. He smartly divides the film into two halves – the initially-50 percent for the youth, the next-50 percent for the spouse and children audience. Yes, we see how calculated this tactic is, which tends to make Don less of a coming-of-age story and a lot more of a business entertainer (suitably, cinematographer KM Bhaskaran fills the frames with colours), but the director manages to succeed.
For the most parts, the film is designed all-around the conflict in between Chakaravarthi, the college’s Don, and Boomi, and Sivakarthikeyan and SJ Suryah’s energetic performances make these portions come alive. The moves and counter-moves that the two appear up with to deliver down the other outcomes in fairly a number of fun times, like the episode when Boomi arranges a parent-trainer meeting with Don’s father or when Don manages to set the instructors in the students’ shoes. This battle of wits is interspersed with a several times of romance involving Don and Angayarkanni (Priyanka Mohan, okayish), which is sometimes sweet and at instances cringey.
Points veer into the sentimental territory in the remaining portions and do get dangerously near to treacly melodrama, which is tonally off from the gentle-hearted tone we get until then, but luckily, it won’t derail the movie. That explained, the emotions it helps make us truly feel in these scenes don’t sense nicely-acquired as it tries to move of poisonous parenting as a kind of ‘untold love’. While the line about mother and father figuring out boosting their youngster by demo and mistake rings legitimate, it is hard to obtain the film’s attempts to switch Don’s father into an endearing figure, offered the way the character treats his son until finally then.
Even so, the solid will make it get the job done. Sivakarthikeyan is a perfect in good shape for this job, even advertising the school portions, and it is his earnest performance in the climax (the real-lifetime parallels include to the success) that actually lifts it. SJ Suryah is splendid in a position that could have easily become caricaturish (like Sathyaraj’s character in Nanban). The minute variations in his expressions add to the comedy in the to start with half. And Samuthirakani’s assists us forget about the last-moment transformation of his character. The rest of the suporting forged — Soori, who seems as Chakaravarthi’s relative, Bala Saravanan, Vijay and Sivaangi, who play his pals, Aadhira Pandilakshmi as his mother — is solid, although the sub-plot involving Raju and Shariq as Chakaravarthi’s rivals in higher education feels forced. 1 also wishes that the director experienced identified a way to make Angayarkanni’s father — refreshingly, a genteel cop — part of the proceedings in the latter phases, given how he is applied for some warm moments early on.
At last, Cibi Chakaravarthi’s conviction and Anirudh’s vibrant score have the movie about the ending line and guarantee that in spite of the relatively formulaic procedure of this substance (it is evidently affected by the films of the early 2000s), the film stays mostly entertaining.