Thiruda Thiruda (1993)

Can some movies with no star cast become commercial hits? Yes,if the director is able to provide the right elements that most of the audience needs at a point.Thiruda Thiruda by Mani Ratnam, with P.C.Sriram and music by A.R.Rahman. It was one of those movies that had no significant and was purely entertainment movie at least for its time. Obviously the director is trying to make the frontbenchers happy.But if u did not get t o appreciate its technical finesse at the time of its release, u will do so years later. The cinematography is astounding excellence by maniratnam and PC Sriram, considering this move was released in 1993.With the advent of large screen High definition screens. This movie comes alive again even better than it used to before after watching it again on original remastered DVD Undoubtedly Ar Rahman's music in this move is clearly the best in his career . Pure and bold experimentation that gave us a unique experience.

This could easily go down as one of the early 90s Tamil movies that had a terrible story and would have easily bombed in the box-office, but was single-handedly rescued by the music director A.R.Rahman. I agree the movie was thrilling and had a lot of action packed in it, but all the key elements of a good Indian masala movie such as mystery, adventure, action and romance, though present in this movie, were not organized properly. In my opinion, the sole reason why people even came to the theaters to watch it was to listen to the music, as opposed to watching the movie itself. I would rate the soundtrack as one of Rahman's finest ever, in addition to Roja, Kadhalan and Rangeela.

I have to admit, though I am a huge Mani Ratnam fan, I was reluctant to watch this film, mainly because the impression I got was that it was a bad film. But i kept reading about the use of lighting and the cinematography, and i thought i'd give it a go.This is probably the least Mani Ratnam-esquire film I have seen, the first 10 minutes i kept seeing homages to Sholay (the initial train sequence and the motorbike the police use) and i mainly put that down to RGV writing. The film gathers pace, characters get introduced, u have the fun chase sequences, some nice little exchanges, and before u realise it the film has finished. The result, a nice little commercial film, which I think is much better than most of the films of this genre made in 2005 in Bollywood. But then again this is Mani Ratnam we are talking about.The really good things about this film; Brilliant songs, brilliant cinematography, you have to watch the song sequence of Chandralekha simply superb. Technically it is a good film. Well directed.The bad things about this film; well i have to say, at times the film just looks really low-budget (especially when it comes to the special effects), the lead actors are a little disappointing i thought, apart from one of the actresses ( her character was called rasathi) the lead actors just lack charisma and anu agrawal at times looked a little overweight. the love-triangle was a little a pointless and the fact that it remained unresolved was disappointing.i do recommend this film, but be aware that this is not a typical Mani Ratnam film so do not start watching the film with expectations of brilliant dialogues, a film grounded in realism, because you will feel a little disappointed.

Mani Ratnam's much-hyped "village thriller" turns out to be just a headache. Great music by AR Rahman is completely wasted (though well picturised) in this awful film, as is Salim Ghouse. Bad dialogue, bad screenplay, bad direction...Bad sums up this film.