Sorgavaasal Movie Review: RJ Balaji and Selvaraghavan’s prison break film with interesting stretches left to become underwhelming watch

2.5/5

Sorgavaasal Movie Review: Story

Set in prison, Sorgavaasal is about a small eatery owner Parthiban (RJ Balaji) who is wrongly accused of a murdering a high-ranking officer, remanded, and put in prison that is notoriously known to be home to powerful drug-peddling kingpin Siga (Selvaraghavan). Siga rules the jail like his kingdom, with his right hands, Kendrick, an African origin who prophesises about Christianity and importance of god, and Tiger Mani, a ruthless thug. Left to swim for his safety in the ocean of cruelty the prison walls offer, it is up to Parthiban to decide if he wants to be the king of hell or suffer in heaven.

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Sorgavaasal Movie Review: Review 

A short way to review Sorgavaasal is that it is story with a bunch of interesting characters, some living in the jail as inmates, while others run it. But a lengthier way to put it means to tell that Sorgavaasal attempts to create a barrage of characters with specific back stories and even more specific intentions, that they overlap each other to create a fascinating set piece but fails to make one cohesive story of a prison break and riot gone extremely violent.

The film draws inspiration from the 1999 incident that took place Madras Central Prison where the death of gangster Boxer Vadivelu, unleashed a riot where the prisoners outnumbered the officials. Sorgavaasal bases this event from the perspective of an innocent man who has to turn from being a lamb to a lion, to survive the situation and ultimately choose to be the heaven’s maid or hell’s king.

To begin with, Sorgavaasal is set majorly in prison, a premise that is rarely explored in Tamil cinema beyond a few typical scenes. In addition, the film tries to throw in some gruesome and dark realities that might not be the first things to pop up when thinking of a prison life. A man being groped by several men, a transperson forced to do sexual favours as powerful men take the advantage to see them as a man or woman as per their whims and fancies, or even how jail often makes its well-mannered inmates to be part of the cooking block. In addition, we also see many characters with interesting choices of back stories. For example, Kendrick is a god-fearing man who keep prophesying the importance of supreme power to Siga. At one point, Siga even calls Kendrick his Jesus as they sit in front of a wall that has Buddha’s mural. But as much as we get these tiny titbits, the film fails to make you humanise these characters, resulting in them being mere roles than human beings who could exist. Siga who is shown to be a kingpin, has drama revolving around him and but we really are not shown what makes him the him. On the other hand, RJ Balaji’s Parthiban who is blamed for the murder of an officer, put in jail and thrashed, gets a good chance to shed his comical side and shine in scenes that makes him emote painful feelings.

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But having said all this, Sorgavaasal is not able to form a connect, because it works in parts and fails to come together as a whole. The world-building of prison, establishing hierarchies, and intricate back stories teases you with a story that promises bigger returns, but ends up making you hang in loose, with an unsatisfying ending. Sorgavaasal mainly operates on the darker shades present even in the kindest soul, and how a man pushed to extremes, can become dangerous than a felonious man. However, Sorgavasaal becomes too indulgent in its world to bring these characters into one line to form a cohesive narrative. It becomes a testament that just interesting characters aren’t enough to make an interesting film.

Sorgavaasal Movie Review: Verdict

Sorgavaasal has interesting anecdotes, one-off characters, and introduces a world that is not of public’s knowledge much. Given the film borrowed from reality and had immense room for fictional play, Sorgavaasal becomes an underwhelming watch even with sporadic stretches of interesting niches.