The female leads (Meera Nair and Archana Gupta) are reduced to ornamental roles—one is a journalist who exists to ask exposition-heavy questions, the other a love interest who disappears for the entire second half. In an era where films like Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru and Vikram Vedha were redefining the cop genre, Pulan Visaranai 2 feels embarrassingly regressive.
Chennai: In the pantheon of Tamil cinema, few films captured the raw, unvarnished underbelly of the city like R. K. Selvamani’s 1990 classic Pulan Visaranai . Starring Vijayakanth in a career-defining role, it was a gritty police procedural that traded melodrama for realism. So when Selvamani announced Pulan Visaranai 2 in 2015—25 years later—expectations were cautiously high. The result is a film caught between two eras: desperately trying to honor the original while getting lost in the commercial demands of modern masala cinema. The Plot: Familiar Turf, Modern Weapons The sequel picks up the thread of departmental legacy. Prathap (R. K. Selvamani’s son, Vetri) is an upright cop carrying the torch of the original film’s hero, DCP Rudhran. The city is under siege by a new breed of crime: international drug cartels, cyber-financed terrorism, and political corruption that reaches the highest echelons. pulan visaranai 2
Vetri, in his debut, is earnest. He has the physique and the scowl for a cop role, and his stunt work (choreographed by the late ‘Stunt’ Silva) is physically committed. There is a particularly well-executed fight inside a moving container truck that showcases the film’s rare moments of technical flair. The film’s biggest enemy is its screenplay. Written by Selvamani and S. Ramakrishnan, the dialogue is stuck in a time warp. Characters deliver long, preachy monologues about “systemic rot” that feel lifted from a 1990s TV serial. The runtime of nearly 150 minutes is unforgivable for a thriller that has only three major action set-pieces. The female leads (Meera Nair and Archana Gupta)