Movies like Agni Natchathiram and the more recent Dhool are proof of the fact that a strong screenplay can offset a thin story and make the movie hugely entertaining. But the reverse - a shoddy screenplay can damage a strong story - is also true and one need look no farther than Image for proof of this. The story here arguably contains more thrills, suspense and twists than many other so-called thrillers but the atrocious screenplay, coupled with bad casting choices, hides all that, instead delivering a product that is, for the most part, unwatchable.

Sathish(Ravi Verma) and Sri(Abinayasri), students in an arts college, go into the forest in order to realistically paint a scene from the forest and win a painting competition. Meanwhile, a gang that has robbed a bank by threatening the bank manager Kaviya(Ambika) and her brother Abishek, also lands up in the same forest on the run from the police. But Sathish and Sri, who get lost in the forest, are now suspected of being the robbers and a private detective Vijay(Vijaykannan) is hired to flush out the pair.

The story requires Ravi Verma and Abinayasri to be lost in a forest but the director apparently could not think of even a single plausible scenario to bring this about. Instead, he comes up with some remarkably inane elements including the art students using the walls in a deserted building to practise (is it really that tough to get painting sheets?!) and planning on going into the forest to paint a scene by 'looking' at it. And the lead couple's bags must really have some magical properties since they seem small and deflated but hold more than a dozen dresses for Abinayasri apart from all their painting equipment (though in hindsight, Abinayasri's skimpy dresses wouldn't have required much space!).

There are quite a few tracks developed in the movie and as the movie switches between them, there was opportunity for raising some suspense about how they are going to be linked together. But the director loses this chance through his handling of the tracks. Painting seems to be the last thing on the minds of Ravi Verma and Abinayasri as they run around the forest while the gang of robbers seems inept considering their conversations and plans. The bumbling policemen chasing them are irritating. Ambika's sequences, where she is blackmailed by the robbers and then worries about her brother, are the only ones that manage to hold our interest here.

The underlying story deserves a much better movie. It packs several twists towards the end that are genuinely surprising(even if not completely believable) and ties up loose ends admirably. But even the concluding scenes are handled in the same amateurish fashion as the rest of the movie, diminishing the impact of the developments. For instance, the police's way of flushing out the villain is to torture another man on national television! So we are still reeling under the implausibility of this whole scenario to be surprised at the uncovering of the villain.

Ravi Verma, seen earlier in Naam, has not honed his acting skills while Abinayasri, with her skimpy dresses and song sequences, seems to be treating the role as an extension of her usual item numbers. Vijaykannan is quite possibly the worst choice as an actor. to play the role of a private detective.