Scene Review: A playful Suriya and an unnervingly ordinary Naslen lift a slow-starting crime comedy; in Telugu too

Scene opened in theatres on 6 November in Tamil and in a Telugu version, which NVR Cinema is releasing in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Jithu Madhavan, the Malayalam filmmaker who made Romancham and Aavesham, wrote and directed it, his first venture in Tamil. Suriya and Jyothika produce it under 2D Entertainment and Zhagaram Studios, a banner launched with this film. Suriya leads a cast that includes Nazriya Nazim and Naslen, while the songs and score come from Sushin Shyam. The film is certified U/A 16+ and runs 2 hours 29 minutes. Our verdict: a crime caper that takes its time to warm up, then turns into a sly, playful contest between a weary officer and a killer with a polite, forgettable face. Suriya has rarely looked so relaxed on screen; a sluggish start and too many lucky breaks keep the film from the top tier.

Story and screenplay

Suriya plays a deputy superintendent of police who is fed up with the job and keeps handing in his resignation, only for his superior to brush it aside and give him another file. A string of murders, committed with unnerving neatness and carrying echoes of an old case, drags him back to work. The man behind them, Eswaran, is no shadowy monster but a mild young man who also takes killing jobs for money, and the film lets us know that from its opening minutes. To catch him, the officer gathers a team nobody would pick: Maya (Nazriya Nazim), who is wrestling with troubles of her own, and his own eccentric parents. He also carries a secret, which the film reveals early and which is better discovered in the hall than read about here.

What sets the film apart is its temperature. Serial-killer stories in Tamil cinema usually come wrapped in dread and grim faces; Jithu Madhavan plays this one for laughs and for crowd-pleasing hero beats, and he keeps the canvas small, with most of the detective work happening inside the hero’s home. The price is paid early. The opening stretch spends a long while laying out its people and their quirks, and several gags misfire. Once the officer’s secret is in the open and the two men start circling each other, the film finds its footing, and the duel that fills the later half is its most inventive and entertaining part. The writing does rely on handy coincidences to push the case forward, though, and a few members of the hero’s squad, along with some of the side comedy, never become more than filler.

Direction

Jithu Madhavan carries the offbeat humour of his Malayalam hits over to a far bigger star without letting the star swallow the film. Suriya’s image stays in the background; the plot is built out of the characters’ weaknesses, and those weaknesses drive both the comedy and the detective work. There are winks at Suriya’s earlier hits and a surprise cameo for his fans, but they are used sparingly instead of being hammered home. The swings between dark comedy and thriller are not always smooth, and anyone walking in for a conventional mass cop film, or for a second Aavesham, may find the rhythm strange.

Performances

Suriya is the best reason to go. Scruffy, mostly in shorts and happy to look foolish, he plays the officer loose, with a comic timing his recent run of stern roles seldom asked of him. It is a performance that trusts viewers to enjoy a star who is not always in control. Naslen, the young Malayalam actor new to Tamil cinema, makes an unsettling villain because he stays so calm and ordinary; he more than matches Suriya in their scenes together, even if the script does not always give his character enough. Nazriya Nazim gets far more than a heroine’s share, with action of her own and a quiet emotional thread.

Music and craft

Sushin Shyam, another newcomer to Tamil films, avoids both the thundering mass score and the usual thriller menace. His background music is light and rhythmic and does much to keep plain scenes lively, though the songs fade quickly. Vineeth Augustian’s camerawork matches the offbeat mood, while Ajmal Sabu’s editing could have trimmed the opening and stretches of the later half. The Telugu version is playing across both Telugu states alongside the Tamil original.

Verdict

Few big-star police films are willing to poke fun at their own hero and at the genre itself; Scene does both. It tests your patience early on and leans on luck more than a detective story should, but Suriya’s playful turn, Naslen’s quiet menace and a lively later half earn the ticket, and it plays best in a full hall. Go in expecting an oddball crime comedy, not a full-throttle mass thriller.