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Had only the writing been efficient to incorporate all the chaos, Smile Man could have been a decent genre film.
A still from the film.
The Smile ManU/A
2/5
Starring: R. Sarathkumar, Sija, RoseIniyaDirector: Syam-Praveen
Sarathkumar tasted great success playing a moody cop in the commercially and critically acclaimed Por Thozhil (2023). Since then he has been trying to emulate its success in vain. Smile Man, his 150th film, is another such attempt, in which the actor yet again plays a brooding CBCID office grappling with Alzheimer’s disease, who is also on a hunt for a serial killer, notoriously known as Smile Man. Like most serial killer films in Tamil, Smile Man also suffers from the usual problems of convenient writing, cliches, and redundant flashbacks.
Honestly, the film kicks off on a promising note. The epilogue has Chidhamabaram (Sarathkumar) chasing the serial killer only to get bashed by him after a near-fatal accident. The unknown killer swears to come back if Chidhambaram chooses to show up again as a cop. Meanwhile, we learn that Chidambaram’s partner (Sunil Menon), who is currently missing, has closed the Smile Man case, claiming that the serial killer was shot dead. Yet, in the present day, the murder starts to happen again. Bodies of victims with skin carved out to make a smiling face (the modus operandi of the killer) are found in the city, and Chidhambaram, despite his health condition, joins the force again to finish what he had started years ago.
Director Syam Praveen comes up with the usual red herrings, with the major being the depiction of Chidambaram as the prime suspect. Even his team suspects him, as Chidambaram hides information from them and seems to know more than he reveals. It takes a lot of victims, time, and audiences’ patience for the screenplay to arrive at the cat-and-mouse game between the real killer and Chidambaram. We inch towards the real meat of the screenplay as Syam Praveen takes his sweet time to follow all the cliches to perfection.
We get flashes of nightmares of Chidambaram, where we see a kid crying and pleading to be saved. It is a sign of an impending flashback. Later, when we meet the serial killer, we surmise he has one flashback for himself too. Forget popcorn, a special tax should be levied on films having more than one flashback to save us from the likes of Smiles.
And it is high time filmmakers make up their minds about psychopaths and serial killers. The psychology behind such characters gets muddled. When we pass through the backstory of Smile Man, we get a sense of confusion in his character sketch. It makes one wonder if the film is trying to empathise with the character. On one end, Smile Man is depicted to be an indifferent and emotionless monster, but then we are also told a bit of love could have redeemed him. On top of that, we don’t understand why he would follow his modus operandi on the kid.
Neither do we understand the way Alzheimer’s disease is dealt with in the film. Chidambaram comes across as Sanjay Ramasamy from AR Murugadoss’s Ghajini. There’s only one explanation for all such blunders in Smile Man: lazy writing. The makers wanted to do many things at once. There is a story about betrayal, a backstory for the villain, one for the hero, and there is Alzheimer’s issue. Had only the writing been efficient to incorporate all the chaos, Smile Man could have been a decent genre film.