It’s not a new attempt, but an attempt to bring out a common social issue that has been prevailing in our society for a very long time… Our filmmakers have handled various issues pertaining to caste, feminism, corruption and many more, but sports have remained to the back seat. In fact, ‘Cricket’ remains to be the closest synonym that have been witnessed in ‘Lagaan’, ‘Chennai 600028’, ‘1982’ and the queue keeps running into length. For the first time, a film comes up laying more emphasis on ‘Basketball’. And you need not correlate this with the fun-filled ‘High School Musicals’ franchise, but a different one indeed.
Set in backdrops of Trichy, the film centers on a couple of childhood friends Krishna (Nakul) and Siva (Kazhugu Krishna), who are talented basketball players. They have a finest coach (‘Eeram’ and ‘Mirugam’ fame Aadhi) and their lives are fine until Siva unexpectedly passes away when the ball from Krishna hits him on basketball court. Heavily broken down over his friend’s demise, he gives up his interest in this game and vows not to play it anywhere again in life. He comes down to Chennai for pursuing his second year at National College so as to forget about his past. He comes across a new friend Guna. They soon become acquainted and situations urge the protagonist to resume his games. But his opponents are not on the other side of court, but the cricket champions of the same college who don’t want other ‘Game’ to gain honour for the college.
Nakul has exerted his complete energy into the film and it is nice to see him improvised in his performance. Moreover, it’s impact of Arivazhagan’s narration that intensifies his role. Mruthula Bhaskar has nothing much to perform here and bound to a stereotypical role as we have seen in many movies. Jagan does his role with brilliance. Atul Kulkarni as usual takes a cakewalk with his characterisation. Siddarth, Amzath Khan and Chandru have done complete justice to his role.
On the technical side, Bhaskaran’s cinematography is captivating, especially with the scenes that include the ‘Game’ sequences. Musical score by Thaman is just average and he follows the same pattern of musical theme from the time of ‘Eeram’. Editing is sleek in places.
When it comes down to storyline, there is nothing new in the film. But the screenplay works out some best results in few places. The first half has some slow moments with usual prototyped scenes, but the post-intermission sequences deepen the magnitude.
On the whole, ‘Vallinam’ can be watched for gripping story and it’s a good attempt to bring out new sports theme to the industry that has been running behind cricket for over a long period of time.
VERDICT: Strong and gripping in places.