Adharma Kadhaigal Movie Review : Blunt writing choices spoils the revenge plans

Adharma Kadhaigal Movie Synopsis: Four anthologies about revenge explore the need for vengeance, the effects of self-harm, and forgiveness through the lives of different people.

Adharma Kadhaigal Movie Review: The more time you spend watching the four-part anthology Adharma Kadhaigal, the murkier the world gets. At first, you see a seemingly naive nurse named Nandhini (Ammu Abhirami) – who was wronged in the past – seek her revenge, savouring every moment of it. This sets the tone of the film, where people you meet are always plotting something. Then, you also meet a depressed man trying to harm himself and another woman who is cheated after blindly trusting someone in power. A slew of violent scenes, death, kidnapping, rape, theft, and a lot more happen regularly in this world. The kind of cruelty we are talking about is where even going to a beach in broad daylight isn’t safe. Director Kamaraj Vel’s raw depiction of such deeply disturbing ideas is stressful but compelling. That said, the seriousness of these intense stories gets diluted because of inconsistencies in the writing.

For instance, in the second part, a young man falls prey to online rummy games and begins to lose happiness in his life. Given that this short is a part of a longer film, the director chooses to convey a large chunk of the story through a voiceover. It’s a convenient method but hampers the storytelling and you never feel connected with the central character. For instance, you see him kidnap a young girl but play games and make Maggie for her because he’s conflicted. He wants money and chooses the wrong way to earn it, but he also wants to ensure the kid doesn’t feel threatened. However, this transformation is better looked at as an idea than an organic change in the film. So even as he begins to transform from a happy, young man in love to someone more monstrous, the little promising ideas do not find space to flourish in a rushed screenplay.

That said, such glaring missteps and one-note characters are thrown out of the window in the second half of the film, offering you two compelling stories. When we see a local rowdy shot to death, the first suspects that come to our mind are cops, military officers, and fellow gangsters. However, Vel surprises us with the killer’s introduction and his intentions. In the next part about surrogacy and forgiveness too, there are layers to why each character behaves a certain way. For example, when a woman withdraws a complaint, there’s so much more to it than just fear. It’s also here that you get some brilliant performances from Divya Duraisamy and the late actor Poo Ramu.

In the tales of the nurse and the young man, you often feel like montages are stitched together using a voiceover or a song. Those sequences neither take us close to the characters nor help us understand their motives. Surprisingly, the use of camera angles, songs, and lighting too is much better only in the last two stories. The writing is cleverer and you can see why Vel wanted to weave four stories connected by revenge. However, these revenge stories needed better planning to land a punch.

Written By: Harshini SV