Penguin Review: Keerthy Suresh Excels in this emotive, absorbing thriller; The Mahanati National Award winning actress Keerthy Suresh, certainly knows what scripts to choose. She has matured and showed great conviction in choosing Penguin.
She perfectly fits the role, and ensured that she not only lived to the expectations of her director, but also her fans who had great expectations from the star.
Penguin is the 2nd mainstream Tamil film after Jyotika’s Ponmagal Vandhaal to directly release on Amazon Prime Video. The tease and trailer of Penguin set the right tone, for the thriller that’s perched on a very promising idea.
It’s a simple, yet convincing story of a mother who won’t give up her pursuit to find her son ( ajay ), despite the fact he was found missing for over six years. The movie opens in a classic thriller movie style and as it progress, it engages the audience into an emotional, heart rending journey of a mother who is relentless and wont give up her chase to find her missing son.
Keerthy sinks into the character right from the word go, and the director had no problem in getting the best of the natural actor who plays Rhythm, suspects, her son has been taken by a masked killer, targeting on young children in the place they live. The film opens to a gripping scene in which the audience in introduced to the killer – sporting a Charlie Chaplin mask – knifing a kid, then moving up the body and throwing it in the close by river.
What makes the audience sit down and get absorbed in the movie is the opening sequence, though it slackens a bit due to some weak spots, Penguin strength lie in the terrific performance of Keerthy Suresh – who carries the movie on her shoulders – we find the movie more a emotive stronger movie that a thriller as it is good concoction of both elements.
Certainly, the emotional element in the plot overpowers serial-killer angle. First-time writer-director Eshwar Karthic probably wanted to emphasize more on the emotional aspect in the story than on adding greater moments of thrills with a sinister serial killer subplot.
We must admit the director has nailed the scenes with great skills, with good dose of thrilling sequences in the first half of the movie, like the striking part when the killer comes to Rhythm’s home and the moment is quite spine chilling, thanks to Karthik Palani’s cinematography skills.
Penguin, is a hard attempt by the makers to make it a hard hitting investigative narrative and with thrills and emotions. To a large extend they succeed too.
Keerthy Suresh, is absolutely brilliant, and delivers her lines and scenes with great tenacity If she had a good supporting cast the movie would have scored even higher in terms of impact. Except for Keerthy. The men in Keerthy’s life – Linga and Madhampatty Rangaraj – had very limited screen space.
The highlight of the film apart from Keerthy is that it is technically rich which maintains its eerie tone consistently is because of Karthik Palani’s cinematography and Santosh Narayanan’s good music.
Keerthy Suresh owns the film from the first frame to the last, and she delivers yet another career-best performance after the stupendous performance in Mahanati. While Mahanati is still in a different league altogether, Penguin deserves an equal applause for the young talented Keerthy’s as she proved she can shoulder a film effortlessly.
It is worth watching.. in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam
Watch the trailer of Penguin
Penguin Premiered today – June 19, exclusively on Amazon Prime Video Co-produced by – Kal Roman, S. Somasegar, Kalyan Subramanian Director of Photography (D.O.P.) – Karthik Palani Film Editor – Anil Krish Art Director – Sakthee Venkataraj M Music by – Santhosh Narayanan