Where is Aabaavanan ?

There was one ambitious filmmaker who came up with a brilliant Oomai Vizhigal, a very good Inaindha Kaigal and a good Karuppu Roja over a span of 10 years. Aabaavanan! Looks like he scripted and produced the first two while also directing the third. All three were off-beat in genre for the respective eras in tamil cinema. Now, he seems to have met with his creative end after the television disaster 'Sambaa', while there still are some unspoken links with Ayngran Intl. in the lines of film-making.

Looking back in time, in 1986, when Tamil cinema had entered the trap of compromising production values and planning movies with the star value as the only marketing front, Oomai Vizhigal should have come as a big surprise. One must admit that these kind of dark-thrillers were almost run in the mill in Malayalam cinema after K.G. Geroge's Yavanika(1982), and Aabaavanan's handling of the screenplay was very unprofessional, clearly reflecting the lack of experience of the team. Nevertheless, credit must be given towards production of such a plotline with limited star value and an upcoming actor like Vijayakanth choosing to play a grey-haired veteran cop while still seeing an upward path in his film career.

One big blotch to be marked is the visible lack of details, while losing the plot to very unimportant romantic fronts, that too three of them. Despite this, one can never fail to appreciate how the film is carried on by three veteran artists, who had very less connection with mainstream cinema at that time, if at all any, a less known Karthik and a practically unknown Arun Pandiyan, and how they managed to see some commercial success out of it. Had this been handled by a creative director of that time like Pratap Pothan or Balu Mahendra, it could have seen light with a tight screenplay while at the same time save a thought for it could have turned disastrous in the hands of Perarasu's of 80's.

While one may argue that Inaindha Kaigal came at the same time as Vetri Vizha and Soorasamharam and was very much with the trend, the plot line was far too ambitious when compared against any action flick of that era. The plot line involved espionage, organised crime, Military corruption, court-martial, prison break, border tension, and above all, the only cinema which dared to explore Indo-Chinese border tension after 1964. Ofcourse, quite a few action sequences were plain lift-off from many Bond movies, but the interval block of "Inaindha Kaigal" and the prison break scene with a flying trapeze were defining moments in Tamil Cinema history. Again, it was a victim of vintage unprofessionalism in screenplay and dialogues, but I would pin hopes on reviving such a plot-line in the form of a remake, for it has too good a scope and deserves a slick production, more so as a trilingual (Tamil-Telugu-Malayalam) high-budget attempt.