Arun Matheswaran debuts with brilliantly directed Gangster revenge drama
Rocky a young man released from jail after 17years for a gruesome murder tries to find the attachment to live this life through his lost family and his journey brings back flowers and demons of past told in violent and nonlinear four part script.
Ravi Vasanth as Rocky, Great Bharathiraja as Mani maaran and Dhanraj the unapologetic assassin gave gloriously violent performances. The emotional knot between antagonist and protagonist, their past told in interlude scenes and even better staging and composition of the scenes make this masterclass on film making.
Arun has taken a masterclass on telling very familiar revenge drama through all departments involved in projects such as camera movement , lighting, sound design , character design, art direction, wide shots , not inter cutting to close ups, foreshadowing, mute, bgm and even final reveal from the pov of child simple but effective handling of all the tools and composition of all the talents involved make this crime drama a film that will be studied by film students and Cinephiles like me revisit to take notes.
You may think I am not being critical of its flaws but it is been very long time we have seen such mastery of the craft since vetri marran's yet another glorious Vada chennai.
But this Rocky not everyone's cup of tea as the shots have taken time to introduce the purpose and single framing for long dialogues will give the feel of boredom or even letting audience disconnect to emotional knots but it worked well for me and with me.
5/5 - Sheer brilliance of Arun for announcing that Tamil cinema will shine in international stage and inspire many new frames of cinema.