Maragatha Naanayam ,movie review
Maragatha Naanayam movie cast: Aadhi, Nikki Galrani, Ramadoss, Anandraj, Daniel Pope
Maragatha Naanayam movie director: ARK Saravanan
Maragatha Naanayam movie rating: 3 stars
About an hour into debutant director ARK Saravanan’s Maragatha Naanayam, we begin to wonder why there is no massy introduction to the hero with a song or a duet between the leading couple in some picturesque foreign location or punchlines that Aadhi could deliver. And it’s so refreshing. He cuts right to the chase and sticks to the script from the beginning till the end. The director should be appreciated for not following the textbook rules of commercial filmmaking in the Tamil film industry.
Senguttuvan (Aadhi) is a daring young man, who comes to Chennai with the aim of becoming a smuggler so that he can repay all his loans. And his quest to somehow crawl out of his financial difficulties lands him in a life-threatening deal. The deal is simple: track down the whereabouts of Maragatha Naanayam, a valuable emerald artefact, rob it and hand it over to a Chinese man, who would, in turn, reward him with Rs 10 crore. But, the problem is that attractive green stone is haunted by a ghost, called Irumporai.
Irumporai was a king of Chola dynasty and he won battles and conquered many kingdoms with the magic stone Maragatha Naanayam. He was so attached to the stone that when he was about to die, he ordered his administration to bury it with him. It is powerful and anybody who sees it wants to touch it and keep it for themselves. It is like the One Ring from the Lord of The Rings. It’s powerful, it’s attractive and it’s badly wanted by a dark soul. But, unlike the Hollywood film, this Tamil film doesn’t have a serious tone to it.
A professor unearths the Maragatha Naanayam from Irumporai’s grave. But where the treasure goes, the ghost follows. People who touch that stone get run over by an old truck that’s driven by Irumporai’s ghost himself. To be exact, 133 people have been killed in the quest of Maragatha Naanayam.
Senguttuvan and his sidekick Ilango (Daniel Pope) begin to prepare for the heist. But, to pull off a heist everybody needs a team right? And they seek a priest’s help to take Maragatha Naanayam but at the same time protect them from Irumporai. Based on the priest’s help, they seek out a spirit named Chidambaram to help them in their conquest and accidentally that spirit enters the dead body of their boss, Nochikuppam Ramadas (Ramadoss). Chidambaram was one of the victims of the quest to get Maragatha Naanayam. He enlists the services of a couple of his friends who also died on the trail of that jinxed stone. The rest of the story is about how Senguttuvan and Ilango escape from Maragatha Naanayam and Irumporai.
Saravanan’s narration has clarity and logic. But, he has come up short on creating fascinating characters that could have taken this interesting story to another level. Only Anandaraj’s character called Twinkle Ramanathan, leaves a mark with his peculiar personality. Rest of the characters don’t really stand out or give us a reason to remember them once we come out of the theatre. Nevertheless, while most of the horror-comedies in Tamil just follow a set of rules, Maragatha Naanayam refuses to be a cliche in every turn of the narration and keeps the audience hooked to the story.
The film also has enough surprises and comedy that do justice to its multi-genre tag. The role played by Nikki Galrani is a surprise but it feels like the director did not explore this character to its full potential. Maragatha Naanayam is fun, entertaining, thrilling and will also crack you up. It’s worthy of your money and time.