'Renuka Makan Raghuraman' is a dreadfully hollow film that perhaps never had any intention to be this mind-numbing. The script that hopes to dwell on something real important, leaves the message unexplored and eventually buries it under a whole heap of nonsense.
Renuka (Urvasi) who happens to be a senior engineer at the PWD department finds her life torn apart when her husband (Ashokan) is murdered. A series of murders soon follow, and Renuka realizes with a shudder that her husband's assailants are being wiped off the face of the earth, one by one.
Urvasi is the only performer in this film that would prompt you to stay put for a couple of hours that would otherwise make you sit on a needle bed. And by the analogy, I certainly don't intend to put across any kind of excitement or tension, but merely the sheer agony of having pins sticking up your back.
What do you think of a film that has a birthday song in it, in which the Commissioner of Police (Bheeman Raghu) and the Principal of a school (Kanakalatha) all shaking their legs together and doing a jig on the dance floor? It pretty much sums up the affairs around here.
The torture is so overwhelming that you feel you wont be able to take in any more of this anguish, when along comes a climax that has been shot in a court room that looks like an stretched out kennel. Its surprising however, that they managed to squeeze in a dozen or more actors into the room and the effects predictably are disastrous.
The film has valid statement to make on a very pertinent subject; that of juvenile delinquency. The plot ways that it adopts to put it across are unbelievably infantile. There wouldn't be any spoilers in this review, since anyone who is ten minutes into the film could very well throw their dart straight on to the culprit's chest.
Urvasi as Renuka is as good as ever. As for the rest of the cast, I wouldn't want to say a word. Or perhaps I should, since there are instances aplenty of real bad acting that would make you flinch. I wouldn't even dare critiquing the filmic techniques that have been adopted for this piece.
You could perhaps accept that a small boy could be out there, blood thirsty for revenge. He might devise the most heinous of crime plans as well. But that doesn't give you reason enough to make him land on his feet like Superman, raising a cloud of smoke and dust, causing the villain to look at him all petrified.
If that's the case, it's a glorification of the criminal, taking the focus totally away from the crime and the cause of it. Sad, but true!
