Review: Draupathi (Tamil)

Producer- GM Film Corporation (Crowd-funded film)

Director- Mohan G

Actors- Rishi Richard, Sheela Rajkumar, Nishanth, Karunas

Genre- Social

Rating- **1/2

Jyothi Venkatesh

The film sets out to weave a tale about a so-called innocent man who has been sent to prison for murdering his wife in the name of honour killing but comes out on bail and starts killing a few people at random you do not know why. Who are the men he is murdering and what has it got to do with his wife’s oath? The film targets on rackets that exploit caste tensions to make money. The film is about how fake marriage certificates are used to blackmail the hapless families of young women, who are trapped in to shooting in the nude for videos in order to be blackmailed

It is a small film that has created enough buzz and hype which is sure to work in its favor as far its box office prospects are concerned but unfortunately for the film, though it was released on February 28, it has been scuttled out of theaters thanks to Covid19 and can now be watched on Amazon Prime Video, where I watched it to review it for bollyy.com

The film opens with a a hurly man Rudra Prabhakar (Richard) imprisoned for honor killing his wife and sister in law coming out of prison on bail.  In the very next sequence, we see him posing as a tea vendor and plan the murders of an advocate as well as a political broker.  Elsewhere in a village a reporter Ranya (Soundarya) is shooting a documentary on the life of Prabhakar's wife Draupathi (Sheela Rajkumar). Strangely, Ranya is able to guess who will be the next victim which gets the police on the murderer's trail.  Why is Prabhakar murdering his victims and who Draupathi was and what is her connection to the killings is what the rest of the interesting screenplay is all about.

The scenes that expose the malpractices in the government registration department and how it affects thousands of young girls and their families are effective. In general, Tamil films have focused on how the rich and upper cast men exploit the girls from the poorer and lower caste backgrounds and this one takes the opposite stand and exposes how the upper caste Brahmins are exploited by the lower caste and puts forward its cases strongly.

Richard , who is the brother of former child artiste Shalini and the brother in law of Tamil super star Ajith has played Rudra Prabhakar rather subduedly and his build helps convince the audience the nuances of his character.  Sheela Rajkumar who impressed in 'To Let' plays a powerful character of a social activist and hers is easily the most natural performance in the film. The scene in which she threatens the villains with death gets the applause. Soundarya as the documentary filmmaker and Lena as the doctor who helps the couple are quite adequate.  Karunas plays an advocate who handles the case in the end and to his credit his comedian image does not hamper this serious role.  The rest of the cast are mostly new comers and fail to impress and are amateurish and just passable.

Writer-Director Mohan G with the minimum resources (read 50 lakhs) available to him has done more justice to his film and its message than what others have done with a comfortable budget and saleable stars in recent times. To sum up, it is a good one time watch, which has already fetched more than ten times the investment for the producers.