Asuran - Revenge is a dish served best with Dhanush and Vetri Maran

The DiCaprio Scorsese combo of Tamil cinema are back for an on-screen depiction of a Tamil novel called 'Vekkai'. Those who are waiting for a sequel to Vada Chennai must keep waiting for now but until then, Asuran is another solid movie from Vetri Maran even though it can't be compared to Vada Chennai in some levels.

Asuran is just a typical revenge story with phenomenal cinematography, camera work, storytelling, and music. Dhanush has lived up to his usual potential giving us another award-worthy, gritty performance as Sivasamy, a farmer with some unusual talents.

The movie is quite predictable from start to finish except for a few scenes and has a very straightforward plot without any deviation from it. There's enough humor in it to keep us entertained and some edge of the seat moments occasionally and a lot of violence considering the fact that this rated PG-13, honestly I'd have been fine with an R rating with the violence and swearing cranked up because Vada Chennai had more freedom and the R rating could have definitely helped the plot, but I guess they needed to get the box office numbers this time.

Pasupathy has played a good part as well winning the hearts of the audience and so has Prakash Raj who has apparently come out of his long Cryo sleep because I can't remember the last time seeing him on screen. Amidst all this brilliant acting and technical work, the standout is really G.V. Prakash's background score, we're introduced to it right at the beginning and it plays a couple of times during certain fight scenes. This is a theme that is as good as the Kaththi theme composed by Anirudh and which fits in perfectly with the scenes. A few songs here and there as filler and a couple of amazing scores. If this were a cricket match that has been won due to a team effort with every player's contribution, the man of the match goes to G.V. Prakash.

Without his theme and background scores, I'm not sure how the movie would have been received and it reminds me a bit of Petta which was another movie with a mediocre plot and low re-watchability but with outstanding background music which just made us forget and forgive any kind of lazy writing and filler content, but fortunately Asuran has a slightly better plot and a great message delivered by Dhanush towards the end which just made me forgive the plotholes and the fight choreography which bent the laws of physics at times and by the end I also learned that a stab in your heart need not necessarily mean that you have to bleed to death. It really felt like Dhanush was Wolverine who could just heal from any kind of major physical trauma and hemorrhage instantly without any discomfort or medical attention.

So overall, the movie has some brilliant writing, very good humor, excellent cinematography, top-class acting, a very good message delivered and a phenomenal background score to support it all making this a very enjoyable revenge story despite the fact that they've done this in Kollywood about a hundred times. There's definitely something special when Dhanush and Vetri Maran pair up and I hope their dream run of making such classy movies continue.

Verdict:
8.5/10

Definitely looking forward to Vada Chennai 2, I hope the success of Asuran generates more hype and moves the sequel into production soon.