The film is about an eight year old boy Samar who
doesn’t have a mother and is abused by his father
who indulges in orgies. Samar’s neighbor Meenakshi
rescues him, rechristens him as Veera and takes him
under her fold after his father commits suicide. A
mentally disturbed Veera seeks solace in Meenakshi
and that culminates to something else all together.
The rest of the movie is about the travails that Veera
aka Samar undergoes and the consequences.
The positives:
Gautham knows the tricks of the trade quite well.
Cinematography by Manoj Paramahamsa is top notch.
The best part is how the director extends a moment
and increases the depth of the shot and makes it more
meaningful. The very beginning when we see a cop being
shot, the frame is slowed down with an in-camera movement
and our heart beats to that rhythm as we understand
the darkness of the subject and prepare ourselves
for the ride. The shot ends with the water splotching
on the screen, announcing the beginning of the film.
Genius! In this era where loud and haunting back ground
music is used in most of the horror and thriller flicks
to induce fear, Gautham has indeed managed the feat
of making a thriller without any BGM or songs.
Brownie points to the NN team for casting the right
people. Veera who plays Samar aka Veera has come up
with a good performance and this being his debut,
he deserves the praise. He is there in almost every
scene and he carries off every get-up and is particularly
suave in the clean shaven look. But at times he screams
too much and the high decibels hurt our ears. Sameera
Reddy as Sukanya brings out the expression of fear
on her face with conviction and looks every bit like
a modern college going girl. Deva who plays a cop
has nothing much to do but he does it well. If anyone
requires mention it is the actress-singer Swapna Abraham
who plays Meenakshi. She steals the show and sometimes,
takes the movie away from Veera; she is particularly
good in the scene where she sees her burnt face in
the mirror and cries.
The Negatives:
Nadunisi Naaygal has excellent technical aspects and
praise-worthy acting but the content of the film by
itself might be of debatable nature and unacceptable
to certain set of audience who might find the movie
a little bit of a shocker. Having said that, Gautham
could have done away with certain scenes and reduced
the running time which would have helped the audience
stomach the happenings. Several scenes will make you
cringe and that replaces the feeling of fear with
annoyance diluting the thrills; adding to it the predictable
turn of events, the movie fails to thrill. Due to
these reasons, despite acting and technical brilliance,
the movie fails to draw us into the story. Also, due
to the narration of the story and formation of sequences,
it is hard to sympathize with the protagonist’s
older self despite us feeling sympathetic to his younger
self. The director has used his lucky ‘first
sight falling in love’ line here too and that
gets a bit boring and does not fit the character at
all. The director apart from child abuse, brings in
multiple personality disorder that includes three
characters Samar, Veera and Meenakshi and this is
shown towards the end of the film when the audience
are already exhausted and it makes us groan and think,
“Not this too!”
Although Gautham Menon once again proves that he is
a master craftsman in the technical department, NN
manages to disgust rather than thrill in some sequences.
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