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Having centered on relationships, love and betrayal – ASAL runs shorts off emotional touch. It’s almost getting annoyed right during the first hour as there aren’t any interesting moments. With lots of characters interwoven into this script, Saran could’ve worked a better screenplay. The story revolves around aged arms dealer Jeevanandham (Ajith Kumar) and their sons Sam (Sampath), Vicky (Rajiv Krishna) and Shiva (again played by Ajith). Being born to second wife, Shiva is often humiliated by his step-brothers, but remains as apple of Jeevanandham’s eye.
Sam and Vicky are misguided by their evil-uncle (Pradeep Rawat) to sign a deal with an offensive group that supplies weapons to terrorists, Jeevanandham turns it down with accordance to Shiva’s concern.Meanwhile, the sudden demise of Jeevanandham abruptly blows them out of waters. But on the spur of the moment, Vicky is abducted by the opponent group lead by Shetty (Kelly Dorjee) in Mumbai. Shiva seeks the help of his father’s friend (Prabhu) to trace whereabouts of Shetty and comes across Sulochana (Bhavana), who falls for him at the first sight.
When Shiva rescues Vicky from the clutches of Shetty & Co, the story takes a different turn as the stepbrothers trigger their bullets on Shiva drowning him into the sea.As predicted, rest of the story is about the Shiva’s act of seeking vengeance on the two brothers.Asal belongs to Ajith Kumar as Saran has barely focused on impersonating him with lots of heroism. Patently, it gets completely tedious to heed every character keeps persistently boasting him as ‘Thala’.
Though Ajith captivates with his stylish looks, he completely disappoints with his dance and romantic factors. It would be better if he focuses into these vistas in mere future. Having depicted in a challenging role as an official from French embassy, Sameera Reddy has nothing special to offer. She looks tomboyish and caters with her glamorous quotients for frontbenchers. Bhavana looks so young to Ajith and Saran could’ve opted for a better actor. Of course, she looks cute and does her part well. Sampath, Rajiv Krishna and Pradeep Rawat sleepwalk through their stereotypical roles while Suresh as an evil cop keeps us engrossed to certain extent.
Yughi Sethu fails to evoke laughter as his comedy sequences are completely nettlesome. Kelly Dorjee is awesome and his encounters with Ajith during pre-interval sequences are stunning. Prabhu doesn’t get prominence and hardly appears in just 4 scenes…Bharadwaj’s musical score turns to be the biggest disappointments as none of the songs savor to the tastes of audiences and so is the background score. Prashanth’s cinematography is captivating as he proves to be an excellent protégé of Nirav Shah.
Anthony’s editing is sleek, though there are few discontinuities between the shots. Costumes by Vivek and Nalini require special mention and art direction is perfect.It really makes us confused on how Ajith Kumar could accept such offers that lacks a proper storyline. To be precise, it’s a hackneyed story repeated often in Kollywood for decades. A very weak screenplay sans interesting moments fills us with complete disappointments. Well, with the stylish Ajith posing with cigars and posing as hotshot model may win applause and whistles amongst his fans. But ASAL is a film that fails to exceed our expectations.