Theal movie review: Earnest performances from Prabhu Deva, Easwari Rao can't save this tedious fare

2/5

Story: A cruel henchman of a dreaded loan shark leads a purposeless life. He threatens and harms others unapologetically as per the instruction of his boss. After living as an orphan for 30 years, a woman comes before him claiming to be his mother who abandoned him long ago owing to circumstances. Her entry brings a slew of changes in his life. Will he let go of the past and start living a new life?    

Review: Hari Kumar's Theal is another example of a Korean movie adaptation gone wrong. The Tamil film is an official remake of Kim Ki-Duk's Pietà. The film begins with a youngster who hangs himself due to unknown reasons. We are then introduced to the popular Koyambedu market in Chennai and shark loans who depend on rampant business activities surrounding the area.

Durai (Prabhu Deva) is an inhuman goon who works for one such shark loan. He is quite unapologetic and cold-blooded when it comes to dealing with people who fail to return borrowed money from shark loans. In fact, there are many families which Durai has destroyed upon instructions from his boss.

He often uses Thilaka (Samyuktha Hegde), a bar dancer, for his physical needs, but the latter falls head over heels for him. Despite warning from her brother, she continues to wait till the day Durai understands her feelings for him. One day, a woman (Easwari Rao) comes before Durai and claims that she is his mother.

Though the latter initially refuses to believe her, he eventually trusts her when she narrates the circumstance which made her abandon him. Her unconditional love for him makes him even closer to her. But he loses his cool when his mother goes missing. He sets out to find her under the notion that one of his enemies would have harmed her. Will he be able to find her and lead a happy life with him? Will he confess his feelings for Thilaka?

It's been a while since a lead actor in Tamil cinema played a remorseless character from the word go. The film's first sequence features him harming a husband and wife for not repaying the amount they borrowed from his employer. The wife goes on to offer herself to him because of their inability to pay back the sum.

Prabhu Deva did justice to the cold-blooded role he essayed despite his character arc not convincing enough to please the viewers. A handful of scenes involving mother-son sentiment works partly because of its staging, but ends up becoming predictable fare because of uninspiring screenplay and lack of detailing in other characters.

Easwari Rao's performance is another positive aspect of the movie. She nailed the emotional scenes and moments where feelings for her son are depicted. The female lead essayed by Samyuktha Hegde and songs that feature her, including a duet song with Prabhu Deva, do not help the plot in any way and test the patience of viewers.

The characters of other artists, too, are underwritten - be it Shatru who played the loan shark, Yogi Babu who appeared as Samyuktha's brother or Arjai who attempted to build his own empire in the market - are all written only on surface level.

The mother-son conflict, too, is unengaging after a point as there isn't any interesting deviation after the protagonist starts realizing his mistakes. Despite a run time of less than two hours, the movie feels stretched because of the lack of character development. A twist in the third act is ineffective and doesn't serve any purpose.  

The technical departments are okayish; the songs are unnecessary, background score does not impress and fight scenes lack punch.

Verdict: The performances from two lead actors do not help the film in any way because of its lame screenplay and unengaging twist.

Theal is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.