Gully cricket is played at different level. The protagonists of our movie play is at the lowest professional level. I have spent a considerable part of my college life, playing cricket for my local team. We would arrange ’bet’ matches with some locality and play every sunday. Sometimes we would win, but mostly we would lose. However, that did not stop us from bragging rights over a shared bottled of local beer. Those were the days.
To those who dont know what a locality means in chennai - Chennai is divided into a bunch of guarded ares or ’localities’. Each ’locality’ has it own individual characteristics and its inhabitants are fiercely proud of their area and hate certain other ’localities’. Woe betide guys found in their rival camp at awkward times.
Now onto the plot
Plot
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The Sharks and the Rockers are two opposite teams, one based in RA Puram and the other in Royapuram. Both take their game very seriously and are deadly enemies both on the cricket pitch and off it. When we enter the story, the protagonists - The Sharks, have just lost yet another local league cup final to the Rockers.
Disappointed, the Sharks wow to fight hard the next time. And then suddenly one of the Rockers team - Raghu’s family has to shift to the rival camps locality. Raghu is at first reluctant to move, since he is afraid the local guys will make his life miserable, but he has no choice.
After a series of incidents, Raghu slowly builds some respect with the local boys. On the other hand, his erstwhile Rockers team slights him when he does not turn up ahead of time for a match. His pride hurt, he switches allegiance to the Sharks and becomes their lead bowler.
The Mirchi FM group announce a local day-night tournament and both the teams decide to take part. Unlike most other movies, the two teams dont meet in the final, but in the semi-final itself. The Sharks team captain - Karthik - is stretchered off after a stabbing incident and the team have to marshall their resources to win. Somehow after huffing and puffing, the team wins. Having won the semifinals, we think they have the cup in their hands. However, there is a final twist which reveals that the fun of the game is not entirely in the winning.
Movie features
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I loved this movie due to the realistic acting by all the guys, both from the Rockers and the Sharks. Although everyone in this movie are relative newcomers (Except Aravind -the waiter and Illavarasu -the manager), the director has extracted great work from all the kids. You feel at all times as if you are evesdropping on the conversation of your local street cricket team.
There are no cliched characters. No one in the Rockers is seen to be an out and out villain. They are just ruthless players who have made winning a habit. There is no sledging, no obvious trickery.
The lives of local youth is guided by a bunch of unwritten rules. Thou not betray the locality. Thou will not pick a fight in another locality. (Better wait till they come to your locality). Thou shalt not covet thy friends sister. Thou will always pretend to your friends to be more sexually active than you actually are. Thou shalt try to ’compromise’ first before getting into fisticuffs All of these ideas (however cliched they appear) are brought out very well in this movie.
Who can forget ’Enna koduma sar ithu’ Seenu (sad violins play whenever he says this), the ambulance driver who is called ’Ezhavu ezhumalai’ (cortege driver ezhumalai) as everyone thinks people die from being carried in his ambulance.
Or of course the bunch of truant school kids to whom our team ends up losing a ’bet’ match and who are the surprise package in the end.
These are mere examples of the sarcastic humour (also called ’nakkal’) that is so generously sprinkled throughout the movie.
This movie represents the young generation not just at the acting level. Behind the screens, this movie is the product of SPB Charan, Venkat Prabhu and Yuvan Shankar Raja - sons of illustrious fathers - singer SP Balasubrahmaniam, music director Gangai Amaran and music director Illayaraja respectively. With such good quality being evident in this movie, I feel very proud of Tamil cinema’s future.
I would whole heartedly give this movie all 5 out 5 stars for the nativity and realism that we see in this movie. We, the audience, need to encourage more of these initiatives. Three cheers to this wonderful effort.