Chekka Chivantha Vaanam Review: A combo of gangster and family drama well delivered!

Chekka Chivantha Vaanam is a mega attempt by the mega director Mani Ratnam. We all know Mani Ratnam’s signature in his movies.

Chekka Chivantha Vaanam is an underplay in that sense. You won’t have much of Mani Ratnam, yet you will also see his signatures scattered around in the movie.

For a Mani Ratnam movie, CCV comes as a surprise, in fact. The movie is written and directed by Mani Ratnam with Siva Ananth as a co-writer.

First of all, kudos to the legend director for bringing in a lot of seasoned actors on screen in one movie. It is really a challenging task to please each of the actor’s fans by giving them their own screen space and mass moments.

But Mani Ratnam has proved himself by doing that perfectly. Only thing I felt is that the women characters act as supporting characters to the male characters and to the screenplay.

They don’t standalone as powerful as they usually are in a Mani Ratnam movie.

Nevertheless, the movie stands high with its screenplay that has interesting twists and moves with a nice pace – though, I must say, it is a lot predictable.

We have Senapathy played by Prakash Raj who faces an assassination attempt. He has three sons – Varadhan, Thiyagu and Etti brilliantly played by Aravind Swamy, Arun Vijay and Silambarasan, respectively.

The movie is a combo of a who-dun-it story telling and showcasing of the clashes between the three sons as to who takes up the throne next to Senapathy.

Clashes are a combo of emotions and guns one must say.

We have Vijay Sethupathy as Rasool, a cop who is also a childhood friend of Varadhan.

The screenplay gives us ample twists and clues as to who would have done the assassination attempt. Some of those are definitely predictable.

For a Mani Ratnam movie, we have plenty of action! That’s a delight to watch on screen, especially when the action is in sync with Mani Ratnam’s style.

Each of the seasoned actors give their dose of performance. There are certain scenes where the screen is on fire when there is verbal encounter (that’s doesn’t involve shouting) between two characters.

Simbu steals the show with his classy acting. He has given a totally different performance in relation to what he has delivered so far in his career.

Arun Vijay is fit and smart. He carries on the emotions – which is a combo of crazy and calm – in a rather easy way.

Arvind Swamy, as we all know, is terrific. We have seen his performance in Thani Oruvan. We could see that dose of Arvind Swamy a lot in CCV too.

Vijay Sethupathy deserves a special mention. Compared to the other male actors, he has been given very little screen time.

Yet he effortlessly scores. He is terrific with his performance and does perfect justice to his role. He delivers even the very simple of dialogues with so much depth and meaningful acting.

That’s why we love Vijay Sethupathy’s acting right?

The women characters Jyothika, Aishwarya Rajesh, Dayana Erappa and Aditi Rao Hydari are pretty much underused.

If we compare all the four, Jyothika is given a bit more weight, but still we feel she could feel a lack of importance in her character too.

For the given number of characters played by star actors, and given the story, the movie has a crisp run time! Which is rather a plus.

But that does take a toll of ARR’s music. We don’t have much of standalone song times. Most of the songs do well in the background helping us digest a combo of emotions.

Nevertheless, the songs are on point, well composed and in ARR’s style fitting a Mani Ratnam movie.

Santhosh Sivan’s cinematography adds life to every frame – we must say he has totally helped deliver the mood and emotions of every scene at its best.

The first half is well spent in establishing the characters – giving the mass moments they deserve and building up the story.

The second half is very well spent in unravelling the mystery, delivering complicated emotions, and setting the screen on fire by bringing together the characters in one frame.

The movie does get draggy at times. And we also get Mani Ratnam style one liners that only his fans could celebrate.

Nevertheless, as a package, Chekka Chivantha Vaanam is a pakka entertainer. Since the movie casts a lot of leading, seasoned actors, it has the potential to attract the fans’ of each of them.

Plus we have Mani Ratnam fans, ARR fans, Santhosh Sivan fans – so you know the selection of crew is already a winning formula for the movie.

Go watch Chekka Chivantha Vaanam on screen for a wonderful experience.