It’s Madras Day and the FM channels are celebrating the city. Chennai is ranked one in terms of safety, announces a radio jockey on an FM channel. This is broadcast in a tea shop where a customer (Shri) is asking for money. He has a back story — he’s come from Trichy to the big, bad world that Chennai is — for an interview at an IT organization, but has lost his education documents.
The files are in a cab that Charlie obtains for rent. He’s not from Chennai too — he has shifted base for better medical facilities for his son who suffers from wheezing.
But Sundeep is from Chennai. He carries himself with the arrogance that a city-bred would. He walks out of the house when his mother calls out to him, treats his father with scant respect and seems more insistent on getting into fights rather than get into a secure job. The girl he loves, Regina Cassandra, has one though — she’s a HR professional in a company that Sundeep tries to apply for. It’s the same company that Shri has applied to and the same company that Charlie plies for.
And then, a kidnap happens somewhere.
Such a complicated chain of events could have well made Maanagaram a mess but debut director Lokesh Kanagaraj admirably handles the parallel narrative tool. The casting choices are commendable — Sundeep and Shri are convincing in their lead roles — but it’s the director’s handling of his solid script that has you in grip. He’s generously helped in this task by cinematographer Selvakumar and music director Javed Riaz; it is quite difficult to believe that all the three are debutants. For, they not only manage to weave in tension and suspense, the core demands of the thriller genre, but also entertain us with some funny moments that provide relief from the darkness of the plot.
The kidnap of the kid (the son of a dreaded don, PKP) is one. I laughed out aloud as the dumbling Munishkanth (he’s a revelation in this film) takes away the child from school in a kidnap sequence that might well turn out to be one of the funniest this year. The dialogue is sparse, but Munishkanth Ramadoss and company create a laugh riot. That you remember the laughs despite the gripping twists and turns in the screenplay is proof enough that Maanagaram is an all-round package.
