Thunivu follows the story of a bank robbery underway carried out by a criminal mastermind whose identity is under wraps. What is his motive? The story here is wafer thin but the good news is that it does have some structure to it and touches upon some relevant social issues. The screenplay standing at about a 140 minutes is extremely fast paced and doesn’t allow you time to breathe. Additionally, it keeps providing you timely information, completely relying on the audience to absorb it and keep pace with it. I absolutely did not mind this screenplay whose core objective was to entertain. And it definitely did!

The drama picks up pace from the very first scene wherein a bunch of gang members are planning to loot a local bank. The next day while the action is on, a saviour emerges who in a twist of events turns out to be a criminal mastermind who is at the bank to loot the money himself. I did like how the character shade of the protagonist was grey although he did wear a white shirt(as opposed to other gang members wearing black outfits). A little metaphor there? Yes, perhaps! And while I did true to put the analyzer within me to bed, I started enjoying the proceedings. It was almost like a guilty pleasure watching multiple character spraying bullets for fun! Again very far fetched but thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining(no I am not a violent person!).

The proceedings are fast paced and definitely does keep you on your toes. The theme here partially reminded me of the Hollywood flick Dog Day Afternoon which also did have a hostage situation. Except here, the situation was on steroids! There were pieces of information consistently being passed on to the viewers almost in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. So the picture was never really clear as to who the protagonist is and what is his motive. Another smart aspect of the screenplay was that it doesn’t allow the viewers to get restless when some answers aren’t provided right away. Instead, the fast paced screenplay does ensure that not a single dull moment is spent which would allow the viewers to be distracted. Yes, a shortcoming could be that there was no effort made at generating the emotions but the mad-hat action sequences worked wonderfully for me.

The twists and turns in the screenplay take place almost in the form of the drama oscillating between timelines. The frequent flashbacks(or even flashbacks between scenes minutes apart) do slowly pave way for a social issue which is addressed in its third act. The tone oscillates between sly comedy and action sequences but the transition wasn’t too bumpy. I still did feel that the impact of the drama would have been better had the character of the protagonist retained some of the greyness that was prevalent in his character. That said, the social commentary was a good one. The final act here despite being entertaining, gave me an impression that the writers were trying just too hard. It was slightly overdone and it felt like a videogame with multiple loopholes. But taking nothing away from the screenplay which was fast-paced, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable! It is popcorn entertainment at its very best!