The devil is in the details !!

CIDMoosa

"The devil is in the details" - Madhavan's cop character Vikram utters this towards the climax - something that literally sums up the movie mood and screenplay neatly! Vikram Vedha is Neo-Noir Tamil cinema at its best, a marvelously layered film where none of the protagonists are black or white. Both of them are grey flanking amid right and wrong and each has their justification for being what they are. A team lead by Vikram (R Madhavan), a ruthless, no-nonsense encounter cop, is on the hunt to capture/kill a dreaded gangster Vedha (Vijay Sethupathi). In this battle of good versus evil the audience is left to pick a side but everything you see is not what you believe. Vedha tells Vikram, 3 stories that happened at various stages in his life. Each of those stories has relevance to the series of events that led Vedha to come all out. As Vikram finds the answer to each puzzle, the dots get connected and you cannot help but admire the hugely talented Vijay Sethupathi do enormous justice to an equally brilliant screenplay, built up-on the Vikramadhityan-Vedalam Folklore. The movie is excellently paced, keeping you hooked without time to anticipate a twist as the differences between Vikram and Vedha fades gradually and goes through a cycle of vengeance/redemption , supported all along by riddled flashback sequences of Vedha. The director duo of Pushkar-Gayathri have struck gold in their 3rd outing after Oram Po and Va Quarter Cutting, amalgamating the so called 'class' and 'mass' elements perfectly with the characterization of a lifetime. With their exposed greys and whites, Madhavan and VJS are picture perfect for the roles, the margin between the so called good and bad guys dissolving seamlessly as the movie progresses. Seemingly minor details like VJS throwing food to the dog and how the title characters addressing of each other's evolves throughout the movie are brilliantly done , the icing on the cake being a stand-off ending , a cliffhanger apt for the screenplay.

score 9/10

CIDMoosa 7 June 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4193556/