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| Thira |
The film is about a youth and an elderly woman - who set out in pursuit of their dear ones - and end up battling a much graver issue.
There are a few factors Vineeth takes care of while conceiving his new film Thira. The script which he has co-written with Rakesh Mantodi brings together an apparently vulnerable youth and a fiery woman - both strangers till they share a common pursuit. The weakness he imposes on the youth is both physical and psychological.
Naveen (Dhyan) has to deal with a bout of asthma and his voice has a slight quiver which marks his emotional fragility. Rohini (Shobhana) is a dogged woman bravely dealing with a personal loss, with a tenacity to take offence and take up violence.
By bringing together such contrasting personas with a common mission, Vineeth makes them draw emotional stability from each other. They are about to deal with trafficking for their personal reasons, fighting a grave and profound issue naturally adds up to the intensity. They would then muster clues from random persons that would lead them to the people they are looking for.
Thira despite placing the characters with precision falls short of the thrill it promises. Naveen reaches a city to meet his sister and she is kidnapped right in front of his eyes. Rohini, a cardiac surgeon who runs an NGO, comes to know that the female inmates of her care home have been kidnapped. Together they face a hugely influential, louring gang indulged in trafficking.
Both the characters never appear to be in any kind of painful struggle, they break into abandoned factory and dark godowns without confrontations. Rohini keeps chanting to Naveen as to how she has done it before, a natural way of giving Naveen conviction about his elderly partner. They pick
up clues easily, making the chase an easy sequence. Jomon's camera is constantly shaky, an effect that becomes unsettling beyond a point. His frames though linger for their special, dark tonality.
Vineeth does conjure up stunning moments of warmth like the one where Naveen lends his hand to a little girl in a railway station who has nowhere else to go. The narrative moves at a steady pace despite the predictability that comes along with it. Somewhere along the script gets caught in a dilemma trying to fathom the deepening scars of an evil practice and thrusting it upon the characters in a way that is less convincing than it should be.
