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Vijay Antony, who is riding high on the success of Bichagadu 2, has now come up with a crime thriller titled Hatya. Directed by Balaji K Kumar, the movie also stars Ritika Singh and Meenakshi Chaudhary in other key roles. The movie has hit the screens today, and let’s see how it is.

Story:

Laila (Meenakshi Chaudhary) is a professional model who gets killed in her flat. What’s mysterious is that her flat is locked from inside during the crime. Sandhya Mohan Raj (Ritika Singh), an IPS officer, takes up the case, and she seeks the help of her master and private detective Vinayak (Vijay Antony) to solve the case. Though Vinayak disagrees initially, he later teams up with Sandhya to crack the murder mystery.

Both Sandhya and Vinayak doubt Babloo (Kishore Kumar), who pretends to be Laila’s manager, Satish (Siddhartha Shankar), who is Laila’s boyfriend, Arjun Vasudevan (Arjun Chidambaram), who is a renowned photographer, and Aditya Kowshik (Murali Sharma) an agent who works at a modeling company. Who killed Laila is what the movie is all about.

Plus Points:

Hatya looks completely different due to the amazing production design. We have been seeing more investigative thrillers recently, and what differentiates Hatya from others is how its world is portrayed in a unique style. The fantastic cinematography gives a fresh feeling altogether to this crime thriller.

Vijay Antony played a private detective in Hatya. His salt and pepper look seemed very natural. One of the best things about Hatya is his subtle performance. Vijay Antony does what his character demands precisely and doesn’t go overboard. The way he delivers dialogues and the manner in which he reveals the final twist is magnificent.

Some of the investigation portions in both the halves are shown in detail, and especially when the investigation points fingers at all four suspects, the film turns out to be interesting. Meenakshi Chaudhary, around whom the entire film revolves, did a fine job. There is a poetic touch to her character. Ritika Singh lends a nice support to Vijay Antony.

Minus Points:

One of the biggest drawbacks of the film is its slow pacing which irritates after a point in time. Initially, significant screen time has been taken to introduce the characters, but even after the investigative portions start, the film moves at a slow pace. The editing team could have trimmed the length of many scenes for a better experience.

The initial part of the second half takes a big diversion from the main story as we get to see family scenes related to Vijay Antony’s character. The director tried to infuse family emotions, but that wasn’t absolutely necessary to this plot.

Murali Sharma and Radhika Sarathkumar have nothing much to do in the film, and both senior actors are wasted in small roles. On top of that, Murali Sharma didn’t dub in Telugu and it is a bit problematic to see someone else dubbing for the fantastic performer.

Technical Aspects:

Girishh Gopalakrishnan’s background score is good in the second half. The retro style of music worked well in a few scenes. The cinematography by Sivakumar Vijayan is fantastic. The art direction deserves special applause as the artwork gave a completely new touch to the film. The VFX works could have been better. The production values are neat.

The editing needs some serious corrections. Coming to the director, Balaji K Kumar, he did a below-par job with the movie. While he handled some investigative portions well, he brought in unnecessary family drama in the second half that diluted the proceedings. However, the biggest drawback of Hatya is its pacing which is painfully slow. Even a few decent sequences lost their impact due to the ultra-slow pacing.

Verdict:

On the whole, Hatya is a slow-paced crime thriller that largely depends on Vijay Antony’s compelling performance. Though a few investigative portions are handled well, the slow narration played spoilsport. The plot gets significantly deviated in the second half with unwanted family emotions. Hence Hatya ends up being a strictly okay watch this weekend.

123telugu.com Rating: 2.5/5

Reviewed by 123telugu Team

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