"A journalist attempts to crack the events leading to a murder on Christmas eve at a coastal town in Tamil Nadu" I would never say Ulidavaru Kandante (UK) as a masterpiece or a cult film as many critics often argue. Keeping apart non-linear narration and ubercool soundtrack, there was nothing extraordinary (yes, it was a good one..but nothing out of the world!) about the slow paced Kannada thriller which had Rakshit Shetty in the lead. Richie, tamil remake of UK marks the debut of Nivin Pauly into KTown, who after the ‘Premam’ had a new found acceptance there. In one word, Richie is a trimmed version of UK. It is a bit racy at times, boasts of some stunning cinematography and some good performances from Prakash Raj,Shraddha Srinath, Lakshmi Priya ChandraMouli and Natty Nataraj of Sathuranga Vettai. Entire soundtrack is adapted from UK itself. The main problem of Richie starts from title itself. Ulidavaru Kandante translated means ‘as seen by everyone’. There was ample detailing of each and every character in the orginal film. For example, mother son sentiments between Rishab Shetty and Tara is trimmed down, when it comes to Richie. Like the title itself, here there was too much focus on the character played by Nivin Pauly. He get a stylised introduction of a mass hero in the back drop a graffiti ‘Welcome to Tamil Cinema!’ He enjoys killing (called by the name Sandiyar in one particular scene) and listening to Thalivar song. Well this character designing would have worked, if the lead actor delivered atleast a decent performance. Unfortunately, Nivin is the biggest blackspot in this movie. He misses the kind of swag that Rakshit Shetty brought in the orginal,in its entirety. Be his body language or his Tamil with strong Malayalam accent, Nivin misses it completely. On the positive side, as an actor Nivin tried to do something outside his comfort zone. Another miscast is the actor who played peter, whose Kannada counterpart Achuyth Prasad delivered a stellar performance. The camaraderie between Prakash Raj and Nivin was not developed properly. As a debutant, Gautham Ramachandran had brought some minor changes to the orginal movie, retaining the major portion intact. Use of red colour tone had infused a kind of neo-noir feel towards the movie. Compared to UK, the climax of Richie was also well written. However a heavily watered down screenplay, poor performance from the protagonist, lack of an emotional connect with the audience worked against Richie, which would have been a good thriller otherwise. Rating: 2/5
