Director and writer: CS Amudhan
Cast: Vijay Antony, Mahima Nambiar, Nandita Sweta, Ramya Nambeesan, Nizhalgal Ravi, Jagan Krishnan
Available in: Theatres
Duration: 144 minutes
In a tense sequence at a rundown bar in Raththam, a madha veriyan or a caste fanatic is persuaded by a man to attack a young mother who is pregnant with the child of a man from another caste. Their drunken stupor becomes heated, and just when we ready ourselves for bloodshed, the tension is undercut with a sort of subtle situational humour that you never saw coming. It goes without saying that CS Amudhan’s Raththam is his most serious film till date. The director, who cracked us up with satirical critical darlings (Tamizh Padam films), weaves an investigative thriller set against two real time issues that hits close to home: press freedom and hate crime. But for a theme as explosive as this, Raththam’s screenplay doesn’t depict the spark — the spark that we’re used to seeing from Amudhan — that even the tiny bar sequence in the film manages to evoke.