Perarasu is one of those directors who seems to take delight in dragging Tamil cinema down. While other directors pick fresh stories, employ different narrative techniques or give their movies a new look, he sticks to his own formula, dishing out movies with regressive sentiments, shoddy technical aspects and complete absence of logic. He is at it again in Pazhani, which is better than his last two movies but still ends up being an amateurish, crude effort with almost nothing to recommend it.

Locked up at the tender age of 10 for killing a woman, Vellaiyan(Bharath) finally gets released from jail after 15 years. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he joins the household of Jeevanandam(Biju Menon) and his wife Karpagambal(Kushboo) as a servant. While Karpagambal admires his love and devotion, Jeevanandam simply sees him as his henchman. But Vellaiyan has own agenda for joining the house.

Pazhani is a movie that starts off with a farewell day in a prison! Bharath is getting released and the other prisoners, with the jailor's approval, have organized something along the lines of the farewell days in college, with banners and garlands. This is quickly followed by a fight with a prisoner who takes exception to Bharath's popularity and a dance with a large group of dancers - all inside the jail, mind you. These scenes pretty much set the stage for what we can - and cannot - expect from the film. Ofcourse considering that Perarasu's last film was the abominal Dharmapuri, we have a pretty good idea of how Pazhani is going to be but this opening scene just confirms our worst fears!

Perarasu had a particular formula that he employed in all his movies so far. He had a key sentiment that drove the movie and threw in a weak romance, unfunny comedy and a series of clashes between the hero and the villain. That is exactly how he constructs Pazhani too. Here the main sentiment is 'sister sentiment' though ofcourse the 'husband sentiment' is exploited too (to what else can we attribute Kushboo staying with Biju Menon even after he has tried to kill her?!). This is held up by a silly romance between Bharath and Kajal(it's facilitated by a beggar woman giving Bharath Kajal's address and claiming that Kajal is her sister) and later, Bharath going up against Biju Menon.

Barring probably Dharmapuri, all of Perarasu's movies managed to stage some convincing battles between the hero and villain. The hero utilized both brain and brawn and the screenplay showed some cleverness in the plans he resorted to. Not here. The comic element is highlighted as Bharath clashes with Biju Menon which makes Biju Menon less fearsome and the sequences themselves, less tense. The climax drags on forever.

Even after the all-round criticism he received for his role in Tirupathi, Perarasu has apparently not lost his love of acting. He appears in a small role as a policeman and isn't able to resist giving himself a hero-like introduction(needless to say, it works as the funniest scene in the film). But as director, he has shown improvement in filming the song sequences. The songs are still unmemorable and their picturization is still unimaginative but atleast the atrocious wigs, brightly-coloed dresses and weird dance steps that we saw in Sivakasi and Tirupathi are absent.

Bharath so far has played the boy-next-door and loverboy roles and this film seems like his attempt to try his hand at playing a mass masala hero like his role model Vijay. It takes a little while but he does carry off the role gamely. He's always been good at dancing and he brings the required intensity to the fights also. A few angry dialogs aimed at Biju Menon complete the requirements of the role. Kajal isn't particularly good-looking and being saddled with a half-baked character doesn't do her much good. Kushboo is calm and composed inspite of all the loudness and crudeness around her and like in most of her recent movies like Vegam, she brings a level of respectability to the film. Biju Menon is hardly threatening while Ishwarya puts her gravely tone to good use in her role.