It’s probably easier for a drama to handle an exotic medical condition. Moondram Pirai was about a woman with amnesia. Sethu told the story of a man who was, for all practical purposes, an amnesiac. The loss of memory, in these movies, was a vital part of the plot. Action films, on the other hand, are torn between the contradictory impulses of sticking to the details of the condition and having to showcase the protagonist’s heroism, which cannot be whittled away by a mere “defect” — and the emphasis invariably tilts towards the latter.
Naan Sigappu Manidhan is an action movie, the usual vigilante vendetta saga, but the way it handles its exotic medical condition is unusual. The hero, Indiran (an effectively understated Vishal), is a narcoleptic, and this aspect is not just a cool marketing gimmick. It has been integrated into the very fibre of the film.
Indiran drops off into a deep sleep whenever he is overcome by extreme emotion. As a boy in school, he falls asleep — literally ; one minute, he’s standing in line, and the next, he’s on the ground , crumpled into a heap — when the student behind him sneezes loudly. And as a grown-up, he collapses during every imaginable situation, from crossing the road to celebrating a cricket match on television.
This, as you can imagine, is hardly conducive to discharging the duties of a hero. How will he romance the heroine if he’s going to be felled by the smallest surge of emotion? And how will he fight the villains when the fear of facing them — or the adrenalin rush while charging at them — can knock him out?
At least for a while, there are no answers. We keep watching Indiran as he goes about the business of living, his condition always at the forefront. It’s the narcolepsy that engineers his meeting with the heroine, Meera (Lakshmi Menon, who continues to execute interesting variations on the tired old things a love interest is contracted to do). It’s the narcolepsy that nets him a job suited to his unique abilities (or disabilities).
When he needs the help of an influential man, it’s the narcolepsy that convinces the man to come to Indiran’s aid. The narcolepsy is worked into a song and even the comic scenes, like the one where he meets Meera in a mall. And it’s due to the narcolepsy that the shocking interval twist comes about. He’s asleep. We think he’ll rise and be the hero. He stays asleep.
This is the second time, after Pandiya Naadu , that Vishal has chosen to play a reluctant hero, an almost non-heroic hero, someone who does what he sets out to do but is still left wanting — and the sanguinary title, taken from a Rajinikanth movie, is somewhat deceptive. This isn’t the realm of the feel-good Rajinikanth blockbuster. This is more sombre territory.
As in that older film, and another one around the same time that did something really unexpected in the context of a Rajinikanth movie, the hero vanquishes the villain, but at great personal cost. It’s the sort of thing that makes us leave the theatre with a twinge. We’re happy the good guy got the bad guys, and yet... The bittersweet end is quite touching. It involves someone who’s asleep, but this time, it’s not Indiran.
The first half is strong. The portions where Meera discovers the “cure” for Indiran’s condition aren’t worked out very well, and her subsequent actions — one of them in a swimming pool — feel rushed. But the director, Thiru, displays a lot of control in scenes that could have erupted into melodrama.
And then we enter the second half, and the film goes haywire. A crime is committed and Indiran has to dole out punishment, and the way he goes about this isn’t the least bit convincing. Everything feels so... convenient.
Still, given the general state of hero-oriented Tamil cinema, where a hollow kind of masculinity is endlessly celebrated, it’s nice to root for a hero who isn’t a slacker but a brilliant student, and who sits down with his pals for a cup of tea, rather than booze, and who gets rejected by a girl his mother sets him up with (just as Meera rejects the man her father sets her up with). For the first time, I find myself interested in whatever Vishal’s doing next.
Genre: Action
Director: Thiru
Cast: Vishal, Lakshmi Menon, Jayaprakash.
Storyline: A narcoleptic becomes a vigilante when tragedy strikes.
Bottomline: A strong first half. And then things go haywire.
