Koorman

Dhanasekar (Rajaj), the protagonist of Koorman, lives in his 12-acre farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with only his Man Friday Murugan (Bala Saravanan), German Shepherd Subbu and his girlfriend Stella (Janani) for company. Stella could be a ghost or a figment of Dhansekar's imagination. A former cop, the guy is now a weirdo — he sports an unkempt appearance with a shaggy dog beard, sleeps and wakes up whenever he pleases, eats in the middle of the night, barks orders at Murugan and Subbu, and speaks to Stella from time to time.

But most importantly, he's a mentalist, and this quality has made him the unofficial go-to guy for intelligence officer Raghuram (Aadukalam Naren), who keeps worrying about breaking protocol, but still sends suspects to Dhanasekar's place so that he can wring out a confession from them. That's how he ends up with a prisoner who is said to have raped and killed his girlfriend in gory fashion. But then, the prisoner escapes. What does Dhana do?

Koorman wants to be a character-driven thriller with a strong message about violence against women. It does have a fascinating central character, but neither the writing nor the filmmaking show competence to handle such a subject. To make matters worse, it has a lead whose performance is all affectation. And thus, we are left with a film that is amateurishly made with a fairly predictable plot (a flashback feels unnecessary given that we get a rapidly cut montage of what had happened in the first half itself). Even the mystery around an underground place where Dhanasekar leaves the suspects during the night doesn't spring a surprise.

Perhaps director Bryan George seems to have sensed this, which is why he tries the obvious — shock us with gore in the name of vigilante justice. Unfortunately, even this doesn't make us feel anything except frustration. By the end, despite the film's short running time, even we start to feel trapped with no chance of escape, just like Dhanasekar's victims.