I reckon one of the features of everyfilmin2011 which makes it unique are that I see movies from the Indian sub-continent.
But while Bollywood has become something of a guilty pleasure, it is only Hindi films that I feel at home with.
Tamil movies offer a culture so removed from ours that I'm still finding it difficult to penetrate.
That is not stopping me giving it a go, however, and the latest attempt is a catch-up on Siruthai, which was released in January.
I've got hold of a DVD on ebay, although I must admit the sub-titles were more than a bit dodgy.
However, that did not stop me getting the drift of the plot.
And, my assessment that this is a weird hotch-potch of a movie is certainly not affected by the dismal English translations.
The problem with Siruthai is that it doesn't know whether it is a comedy or drama.
Now, I'd accept that there can be black comedies but this isn't one of them.
It is actually like two separate films, particularly clumsily woven together.
And it's more than two hours 30 minutes long.
It certainly starts seriously enough with the opening of a grave which turns out to be empty.
We then quickly dissolve into a comedy routine between Karthi and Santhanam, two feckless thieves who attend a wedding with a plan to steal the presents until Karthi falls for one of the guests (the beautiful Tammanah).
There then follows high jinks for the best part of an hour before we rejoin the drama and discover the grave had been that of a powerful police officer who had taken on the local crime lord.
It transpired he not only tackled corruption but was also very handy with a myriad of weapons.
Thus, we have leapt from a laugh-a-minute comedy to a drama with a very high body count.
The two plots become one because one of the thieves and the police officer are identical.
And when the hero officer snuffs it, the thief steps in.
The plot does make sense despite a few plot holes (good guys tend to survive in the most unlikely of situations).
But the film jerks all over the place. One minute it is a comedy which is so frothy it would be worthy of a U-certificate, the next minute the violence is so in-your-face one wonders how it escaped being an 18.
By the end, I was quite dizzy but compos mentis enough to give it 3.5/10
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