Vajram

When Vijay Milton made Goli Soda with the boys from Pasanga, it initially felt like a bit of stunt casting but the film turned out to be one of the most inventive films of the year. Now, Ramesh Selvan seems to be keen on recreating Goli Soda and elements from that film are found all over Vajram — orphaned boys, a place they hold dear and an individual with power taking their life away from them, revenge — but the filmmaking here is dismal (flat framing, excessive slow motion shots, hammy acting and a deafening, Gregorian chants-filled background score trying to make the film appear racy) while the plot keeps turning far-fetched and convoluted. Ultimately, we end up with a bland film that feels like Goli Soda without the fizz. The plot revolves around four youngsters, Aravindan, Madurai, Pandi and Kuttymani, who are picked up from a juvenile prison by a cop who is least willing to part with the property of a minister ( Jayaprakash), for which he is the benami. He plans to kidnap the minister's daughter and get the property for himself not realizing that the teenagers are already thirsting for revenge against the minister, who is the reason for them ending up in a correctional institution. What's their grudge and whether they manage to pull it off is what the film is all about. Ramesh Selvan does have a story here that could have been reasonably entertaining. There are issues that he wants to shine a light on — the appalling treatment of inmates in juvenile prisons and most importantly, the need for everyone to have free access to education. But rather than subtlety, he opts for the sledgehammer treatment. So, we get an over-the-top episode involving cruel prison officers (there is even a suggestion of an officer taking advantage of the boys for their physical needs), a manhunt that is laughably amateurish, a tragic flashback involving an educationist ( Thambi Ramaiah) that is turned into an overlong, terribly melodramatic episode (a character who is raped and murdered is named Saraswathi to underline the pro-education theme!) and an unnecessarily extended climax that tests our patience.