Vikram has chosen a safe formulaic mass movie for this Pongal. Sketch proves once again that “masala entertainers” with the same old story remains the staple diet of entertainment for Tamil audiences at large.
Jiiva aka Sketch (Vikram) is a right hand to local financier Sait (Harish Peradi), who offers loan for bikes and cars. If anyone fails to pay back the due amount, Sketch’s job to seize the vehicle. Things go well, until Sait challenges Sketch to seize an old Fiat car of a gangster Kumar(Babu Raj), who consider it as his precious possession in memory of his dad. Now Kumar sketches a plan to kill Sketch and his close friends but the wounded tiger pounces back at the end only to know the ‘real’ faces behind all the murders
The role or the plot is not challenging for a fine actor like Vikram, but he’s earnest and energetic as usual. The actor looks matured and its high time he decided not to play the happy-go-lucky youngster in future. Director Vijay Chander has used the same old story and screenplay in the first half so nothing extraordinary here. Sketch actually gets interesting only with the interval chasing sequence. Post intermission, the pace of the film falls and raises like a sinusoidal wave.
Tamannaah has been only used for songs and she adds that ‘homely’ flavour to the film. RK Suresh has been underutilized and the main antagonist Babu Raj is not a great choice. Thaman’s album is rightly mixed with equal number of peppy and melody tracks, he also elevated the action sequences with his pulsating score. Cinematographer Sukumar provided visuals required for a mass film. The climax and interval action sequences are the film’s major highlights, so kudos to the stunt director.
Other actors who have done a good job include Arul Doss, Sriman and Soori, who has a very limited role in this film.
Sketch has a really strong message to give but then, it comes in only the last five minutes of the film, making one wonder if the message was added as an afterthought.
On the whole, Sketch is definitely not the best film that Vikram has acted in but it certainly isn’t bad either.
