TJ Gnanavel’s ‘Vettaiyan’, with Rajinikanth, is a solid, dignified procedural, but this story about encounter killings needed more excitement and flavour

The opening credits of Vettaiyan play over the glamourised image of a gun – like in the Bond movies – and appropriately enough, we soon get to see Rajinikanth as a trigger-happy cop named Athiyan, a renowned encounter specialist. When his image appears on a presentation in a class at the National Police Academy, the students instantly recognise him. This is one of the many bits of commentary by writer-director TJ Gnanavel: there are lakhs of hardworking cops in the country, and yet, the glamourised ones – the Super Stars, so to speak – are the ones who do encounters. Here’s another valuable bit of commentary: most of the people killed in encounters are from the lower rungs of society, the marginalised who are casually dismissed by a cop here as “slum people”. It makes you stop and think for a minute. And as a thug asks, “I may be a bad man but are some of you cops any better?”

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galattaplus.com/tj-gnanavels-vettaiyan-with-rajinikanth-is-a-solid-dignified-procedural-but-this-story-about-encounter-killings-needed-more-excitement-and-flavour/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

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