Sawaari

Cast

Production

The film marked the debut of director Guhan Senniappan, who had finished as a runner up in the reality show Naalaya Iyakkunar's third edition. Vishal Chandrasekhar was signed on to compose the film's music, while Chezhiyan and Kishore worked on the cinematography and editing for the project, with Sawaari, become Kishore's final project to release after his death in 2015. Guhan described the film as a "psycho thriller" featuring a predominantly new cast of Benito Franklin, Karthik Yogi and Mathivanan Rajendran. Beginning production in January 2014, the team shot scenes in Mahabalipuram and carried on filming throughout 2014, before beginning promotions in early 2015.

The delay of the film's release meant that director Guhan moved on to begin work on another project titled Kanneer Anjali in 2015. Sri Thenandal Films later picked up the project in February 2015 and prepared it for a release.

Plot

The film starts with a murder mystery. The main plot deals with how an Assistant Commissioner of Police is in the pursuit of finding the psycho killer. There is a sub plot of the film that talks about a harmless driver who aims to deliver a car on time from Chennai to Nellore but ends up getting into a tangle.

Sawaari is road psycho thriller movie that you have seen since 1950s in Hollywood but Kollywood hasn’t tried it yet. Rajat Mukherjee from RGV stable tried his hand on it with Road in Bollywood and it bombed miserably. It’s not an easy path to take because you have to do a lot of work to preserve the attention of the audience.

The movie starts with a police investigation of a triple murder that is suspected to have been done by a psycho serial killer. The investigating officer, Solomon (played Benito Franklin Alex) is about to get married the next day and tries to take a break by subordinating the investigation. On a parallel side, Ravi (Karthik Yogi) is on the road to deliver a car (a Contessa classic 1990 model) to a superstitious MLA at Nellore. Solomon’s car breaks down and he hitch hikes with Ravi. The rest of the story revolves on how the psycho killer is identified in the road trip they take from Chennai to Nellore.

Critical Reception

Sawaari has received generally positive reviews from critics. Malini Mannath from The New Indian Express in her review: "The plot follows the road journey of three main characters as they try to reach their respective goals. While the first half is refreshing, with a promise of exciting possibilities that could happen on the trip, the second falls short of what one had been led to expect", 'The director maintaining a racy pace'. Behindwoods rated 2.25 out of 5 stars with the verdict "Sawaari is a decent movie for the budget in which it was made. Fairly engaging crime thriller!." IMDb rated 6.5 out of 10 stars.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was composed by Vishal Chandrasekhar, Vishal received critical acclaim for his work in Siddharth's Jil Jung Juk (2015), and recorded songs featuring music composers Anirudh Ravichander, Santhosh Narayanan and Sean Roldan in the album. The song "Shoot the Kuruvi" became well noticed, while for another song "Red Roadu", Vishal worked on a mix between 1950s swing and EDM for the tune. He was recently worked on Aagam, and Krishna gaadi veera prema gaatha featuring Nani. He is now working on several projects like Thaami means selfie and Simba.