Richie Review: A half-cooked realistic crime thriller which ends up as a disappointment
Richie is one of the most awaited Tamil films of this year as Mollywood Star Nivin Pauly playing the lead in it. This flick has been written and directed by a debutant named Gautham Ramachandran and produced by Anand Kumar and Vinod Shornur under the banner of Cast and Crew. Richie is the official Tamil remake of the Kannada thriller named Ulidavaru Kandante, which was written, directed and starred by Rakshit Shetty. It was released in 2014 and was a big success there in Sandalwood as well. Sradha Sreenath played the female lead in the Tamil version of this movie and Prakash Raj also playing an important character in it.
The plot of this flick revolves around the title character named Richie played by Nivin Pauly. But at the same time, it tells the story of Selva, Megha, and Raghu as well. The plot of this movie is set in a coastal village named Manappadu in Tamil Nadu and it shows the incidents that happen there. It portrays how the situations force the lead characters to do certain things which turns their lives upside down.
We can say that director Gautham Ramachandran who wrote the adapted screenplay and directed this movie failed to do complete justice to the original version Ullidavaru Kandante. Even though he had done a decent job as a writer and director, it was not good enough. He tried to make it as a class and mass film at the same time. But the blend did not happen and the audience may feel that something is missing somewhere in it. The emotional attachment with the characters does not happen and that is the main negative of the screenplay. Once again we can see the mass avatar of Nivin Pauly through this movie. The director had tried to use his mass appeal. But when compared to the performance of Rakshit Shetty in its original version, Nivin ended up as an average performer.
But if we did not consider the original Kannada film and viewed Richie as a new crime movie, Nivin Pauly’s performance as Richie is the major highlight of this movie. His energy, screen presence and mass appeal with that beard look were just fabulous. He only fumbled when it came to dialogue delivery in local Tamil dialect. Sradha Sreenath had done a great job and even though her screen space was too small in the film. Others like Prakash Raj, Natarajan Subramaniam, Lakshmi Priya Chandramouli, Raj Bharath, G K Reddy, etc also done their part to perfection. Nataraj’s performance needs special appreciation as he had done a great job as Selva, the boat mechanic who is in love.
The camera for this film is cranked by Pandikumar and his visuals were terrific. He had provided realistic and mass visuals along with some dark shade frames as well which created the right atmosphere to tell the story. Music was tuned by B Ajaneesh Loknath and he had done a great job as well, especially, with the background scoring. Atul Vijay edited the movie and he gave the film a nice flow with his sharp cuts.
In total, Richie is a one-time watchable realistic crime movie, if you not yet watched the original Kannada version. If you are a fan of the Kannada version, then Richie will be a disappointment for sure.
