Devadas Brothers

Devadas Brothers begins with an introduction of its four protagonists. Ram (Dhruvaa) is working out to get into the military. Jegathesh (Hari Krishnan), an Ajith fan, is trying to get a job as a mechanic. Sathya (Bala Saravanan) is a contented farmer. Krishna (Ajai Prasath) is a rich kid looking for company. Their ordinary lives take a turn when romance enters their lives when they are wooed by four girls (Sanchita Shetty, Shilpa Manjunath, Aara and Deepthi Manne). But then, when these young women decide to break up the relationship for reasons of their own, the guys, who meet at a bar, decide to wreck the girls' lives. Where does this thirst for revenge take them?

Going by its first half, you might think of Devadas Brothers as yet another movie with jobless young men, illogical female characters, a listless narrative and a script that just doesn't get to the point it wants to raise. Given that he has four pairs of lovers, Janakiraman is content with filling up screen time with separate introduction scenes, meet cutes and break-up scenes for his four protagonists. Throw in a song or two (or three), and that is all is needed to fill up the 45-50 minutes that make the first half. Which would have been fine, if there had been a couple of memorable moments and performances. Sadly, what we get are barely functional performances and generic scenes with dialogues that seem to have been written mainly in the dubbing studio, especially lines like "Sex-ngradhu oru nambikka" that the filmmaker would have thought of as cool, but aren't. The saving grace is the picturisation of the song Rotula Trainu Oduthe, which shows some imagination.

In the second half, things take a dark and even creepy turn when the four men decide to get back at the women. We get to see the men harassing the women and this even includes installing hidden cams in their rooms and broadcasting their activities live online! This would have been alright if these actions had been presented in a matter-of-fact manner, but here, both the visuals and the score try to glorify them... up to a point. It is only in the final 15 minutes or so that these characters are portrayed as what they are... men so blinded by hate that has turned them into criminals. The film then turns into a Message movie... message with a capital M. We even get panellists discussing the actions of these men on TV. And even Samuthirakani turns up to offer what he has been parodied for... free advice. But given how playful the film's tone felt until then, this tonal shift doesn't work and just comes across as an attempt by the filmmaker to stay politically correct.