REVIEW
 
8 Thottakkal is a Tamil movie starring Vetri Sudley and Aparna Balamurali in prominent roles. The cast also includes Nassar and MS Bhaskar. It is a crime thriller movie directed and written by Sri Ganesh, forming part of the crew. The movie is inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog. It is Produced by Vetrivel Saravanan and the music is composed by Music Director Sundarmurthy who scored enthralling songs and background score. 
 
STORY
 
Sathya (Vettri) is wrongly accused of a murder and spends time in a juvenile home and ends up becoming a cop a profession he is indifferent to.  He is attracted to a young journalist Meera Vasudevan (Aparna Balamurali) who takes up a fight with the station, Inspector Guna (Mime Gopi)  who does an injustice to an elderly typist (R.S. Sivaji).  Sathya who usually spends his days in the station is put on a mission by Guna during which he is robbed of his loaded gun by a juvenile criminal.  Sathya is given twenty four hours time to get back his gun by the inspector and when he fails he is suspended and senior cop Pandian (Nasser) takes up the case.  Meanwhile an elderly man Murthy (M. S. Bhaskar) gets hold of the gun and uses it to rob a bank ingeniously.  Who is Murthy and how can a common man be so meticulous in his planning of the crime are some of the interesting questions that are posed and answered in the end. 
 
PERFORMANCE
 
It’s a script that’s surely the result of some serious brain-work on the part of director Sri Ganesh, who’s not far behind the rich crop of promising debut filmmakers we’ve had in recent times (Karthik Naren and Lokesh Kanagaraj with Dhruvangal 16 and Maanagaram respectively). There’s promise in the writing, thought in the execution. 
 
The one who stands out is M.S. Bhaskar, who’s terrific as Krishnamoorty. In one of his best roles so far, Bhaskar scores big time – dominating and quivering as and when the need arises. Nasser is in good form, and so are Manikandan and Lallu. 
 
But the same cannot be said of Vetri. He certainly looks the part, but is hardly convincing as someone who’s under immense duress. It certainly doesn’t help that the director saddles on him a love interest (Aparna Balamurali) and throws in a few songs that have absolutely no relevance to the scheme of things. 
 
PLUS
 
Script 
MS Baskar and Nasser’s Performance 
 
MINUS
 
Vetri’s Performance 
Songs placement 

Verdict : A Promising Attempt From a Debutant!

Stars : 1.5/5