The opening credits gets the cheers from the audience. It’s a throwback to Saamy, which released 15 years ago. Vikram being posted to Tirunelveli, locking horns against ‘Perumal Pichai’ and mouthing the dialogue: ‘Na Police Illa, Porikki’...they’re all pleasant memories of an engaging cop drama.
And then, we get to Saamy Square. Aishwarya Rajesh might have replaced Trisha as ‘molagapodi’, but Saamy (Aarusamy) is still active. His opening sequence features him inside a police station. Outside, two sets of villagers have gathered to create issues for a wannabe-couple who’re seeking refuge inside the station. When Vikram comes face to face with the camera for the first time, there’s hay flying in the air. Local rowdies soon join the hay in flight, as Saamy bashes them all. Oh yes, we’re in a Hari film all right.
- Genre: Action
- Cast: Vikram, Keerthy Suresh, Aishwarya Rajesh, Bobby Simha
- Storyline: A son has to take revenge on the criminals who killed his policeman father
The film abruptly cuts to ‘28 years later’ and the scene of action is in Delhi, where Rama Saamy (Vikram) works for a national minister. He’s supposed to be a front-office manager, but whenever he brushes against any cop anywhere, he gets a shock (yes!) and “turns” into a policeman. This is one of the many incredulous sequences in the film. Here’s another: Diya Viswananthan (Keerthi Suresh) falls in love with Rama Saamy not because he saves her from a few goons but because he takes her torn clothes to a tailor and mends them before dropping her off. Wait, there’s more. When Delhi Ganesh recalls the 28 years that have passed, he references the Ramayana and the Mahabharata!
Saamy Square is filled with such unintentional humour. There’s a villain, Ravana Pichai (a wasted Bobby Simha), who is the son of Perumal Pichai, the memorable baddie from the first part, who does nothing but talk on the phone angrily all the time. Soori gets in a few average one-liners, the most memorable of them involving a gurkha, but that’s barely anything to go by. Saamy Square’s second half is undoubtedly better than the first — there are a couple of whistle-worthy scenes — but the strong plotline that we saw in the 2003 original is hardly present here. Composer Devi Sri Prasad has some fun with the tunes (‘Adhiroobaney’ is a pleasant surprise) while the editing (VT Vijayan and Jai) is quite typical of what you’d expect from a Hari film.
Vikram is solid in performance, as you’d expect of a seasoned actor like him, but he is let down by a lengthy film that keeps churning out cliched scenes. Director Hari works best with stories set in small towns (think Singam, Saamy and Ayya). With Saamy Square, he’s primarily operating in home zone (Tirunelveli, Delhi and Rajasthan), but still fails to engage effectively.