‘Hatya’ movie review: Decent crime thriller

Vijay Antony, who is riding high on the success of “Bichagadu 2,” has now come up with a crime thriller titled “Hatya.” Directed by Balaji K Kumar, the movie also stars Ritika Singh and Meenakshi Chaudhary in other key roles. The movie has hit the screens and let’s see how it fares at box-office.

Story

Laila (Meenakshi Chaudhary) is a professional model who gets killed in her flat. What’s mysterious is that her flat is locked from inside during the crime. Sandhya Mohan Raj (Ritika Singh), an IPS officer, takes up the case, and she seeks the help of her master and private detective Vinayak (Vijay Antony) to solve the case. Though Vinayak disagrees initially, he later teams up with Sandhya to crack the murder mystery.

Both Sandhya and Vinayak doubt Babloo (Kishore Kumar), who pretends to be Laila’s manager, Satish (Siddhartha Shankar), who is Laila’s boyfriend, Arjun Vasudevan (Arjun Chidambaram), who is a renowned photographer, and Aditya Kowshik (Murali Sharma) an agent who works at a modeling company. Who killed Laila is what the main crux of the film.

Analysis

This film initially sets up for an interesting and complicated web of suspicion and mystery, which makes the audience wait for the twists and turns upcoming in the world of the investigation. But that’s all there is to the film. The film does not surprise with the writing and the events that are taking place. By taking us into Laila’s life, Director Balaji Kumar takes us through her journey and reveals how the investigation works in parallel in a non-linear manner. This looks and works well in certain scenes. But the director was not completely immerse the audience in the emotional threads of the lead characters. Moreover, the attempt to show the film in a different kind of world/backdrop did not work out.

The idea of connecting Vinayak’s personal loss and his trauma in the case that he’s investigating seems good, but does not sync into the narrative because of false tone of emotion in his family scenes except for one or two. The second half gets a bit better at the initial phase, but soon it delves into a bland affair with the wait for the real Killer getting exhausting. The final twist also lacks the punch and the reason behind the murder looks silly.

On the whole, “Hatya” is a slow-paced crime thriller that largely depends on Vijay Antony’s compelling performance. Though a few investigative portions are handled well, the slow narration played spoilsport. The plot gets significantly deviated in the second half with unwanted family emotions.

Performances

Vijay Antony was fine in his role, but his hairdo looked improper. His efforts were seen in the film. The character also looked like tailor made for the actor. Ritika Singh and Meenakshi Chaudhary were fine, while Radhika Sharath Kumar got wasted in an insignificant role. Murali Sharma, John Vijay and others were ok.

Technicalities

Director Balaji K Kumar can do better with the movie. While he handled some investigative portions well, he brought in unnecessary family drama in the second half that diluted the proceedings. However, the biggest drawback of “Hatya” is its pacing which is painfully slow. Even a few decent sequences lost their impact due to the ultra-slow pacing.

Girishh Gopalakrishnan’s background score is good in the second half. The retro style of music worked well in a few scenes. The cinematography by Sivakumar Vijayan is fantastic. The art direction deserves special applause as the artwork gave a completely new touch to the film. The VFX works could have been better. The production values are neat. The editing part is not up to the mark and it can be much better.

Advantages

Initial Setup

Few intriguing moments

Camera

Background score

Drawbacks

Weak character establishments

Second half

Unnecessary family emotions