Mafia: Chapter 1 Review

“This hero-villain thriller is poorly written that heavily depends on slow-motion effects and climax twist”

Cast: Arun Vijay, Prasanna, Priya Bhavani Shankar
Music: Jakes Bejoy
Direction: Karthick Naren

Karthick Naren’s debut film ‘Dhuruvangal Pathinaru’ was nothing short of a stunning film. His second venture ‘Mafia: Chapter 1’ is about the cat-mouse game between Aryan (Arun Vijay)who works in Narcotics division and Divakar Kumaran (Prasanna) who is the main head of drugs distribution network. With two brilliant actors on board and a director who created Tamil cinema’s finest thriller, this film should have been a nail-biting face-off between the two characters.

The film sadly turns out to be exhaustive with nothing interesting in writing. The writing feels like the writing was hastily done with loosely written characters. When compared to a similar genre film, Thani Oruvan, the characters are well written- their motives, their ideologies and the screenplay has something interesting to offer. In this film, Arun Vijay and Prasanna tries to bring the loosely written characters live by their electrifying performances.

Apart from their performances, there isn’t much in the film. Karthick Naren makes this film highly stylised with vibrant colours, great choice of costume designs and slow motion edits. But all these stylising techniques couldn’t fill the void created by poor writing. Even the character Sathya (Priya Bhavani Shankar) is poorly written that it makes you cringe. Sathya is a narcotic officer working with Aryan. Since she is the actress of the film, she is also girlfriend of Aryan.

Karthick Naren’s debut film is well-written with so much detailing. He started working on his second film, ‘Naragasooran’ which is yet to see the limelight. Mafia looks like he has written out of desperation. The film was conceptualized as two part film or a franchise type. And the film’s ending was brilliant segue to its sequel. But this definitely doesn’t work as a film. I wish his next outing with Dhanush is as interesting and exciting as his debut film.

Verdict: This hero-villain thriller is poorly written that heavily depends on slow-motion effects and climax twist