Jayasurya: Slow and nearly steady

September 4, 2015, Source

When you have regular releases increasingly freeing themselves from opulent drama, deviating from the roots of a conventional masala fare, here’s Jayasurya that revels in being an old fashioned product. Given the sincerity of its efforts and the honesty with which the director Suseenthiran leaves his inimitable stamp in a commercial exterior, it takes its own sweet time to register an impact, but when it does, the film’s solidity shows up.

Cop dramas have understandably become a clichÉ in the recent times as they hardly have time to capture the humane side of the officer’s lives, with storytellers losing themselves in the blunt showcase of the male protagonist’s machismo avatars, reducing their beloved as weaknesses.

Jayasurya’s first hour too shows indications of that, but the director on a majority rids himself of all the flab to make Vishal look larger than life.

The romantic track between Vishal and Kajal Aggarwal starts off well in a near poetic fashion, with the latter in her difficulty to cross a road follows Vishal’s footsteps and the picturisation throwing every indication of their union. Soori provides reasonable comic relief as the narrative settles down as a passable mass outing. As with the lead actor’s earlier films like Bharani, Pogaru and Pandem Kodi, whose references are inserted here too, there’s a family backdrop that warrants attention. There’s an engaging plot that slowly begins unfolding, which you may even lose track of, with the amount of leisureliness in the proceedings.

The action thread comes in intermittently to ensure progress, and with the director’s wile in ensuring them a touch of reality, you are just about kept glued. A masala film’s potential considerably revolves around the interval bang and here’s where Jayasurya packages a good surprise. Then, the intensity and the drama get the needed priority where the intelligence games are neatly executed that are quite practical for the film’s low-scale setting too. The chases do have an element of rustic style in them, but you begin digesting what’s shown without apprehension.

As much as the plot is the amount of technique and purpose you go onto appreciate in the result, that clearly stays true its aspirations throughout. There are the similarities you can often track back to the maker’s earlier film Palnadu, which too revolved around a family conflict.

A little freshness is a compromise here, but D Imman’s terrific score does the trick in raising anticipation in the key moments. Although Vishal and Samuthirakani do deliver good performances and Kajal’s presence uplifts its scale, the off-screen heroes are the ones who the seal the day for Jayasurya. Not the best but definitely a worthy watch.

Jayasurya

Cast: Vishal, Kajal Aggarwal, Samuthirakani

Director: Suseenthiran

Music: D Imman

Bottomline: Retro-styled narrative wins