“Our Saamy.. Rendu Saamy….. Aaru Saamy!!”.. these words quoted by Rajni in Saamy movie’s 100th day function reverberated across the whole auditorium. This dialogue as well as the perfect masala story in Saamy made the movie a huge hit 2 decades ago. The success of Arul, Aaru, Vel, Singam series and the lesser known Thamirabarani, Poojai have cemented Hari’s place in as pakka commercial director.
Most of his movies revolve around a large family with the
youngest son (played by various heroes) protecting the family against a
powerful protagonist. The racing screenplay coupled with some power packed
action sequences lead the way through with some beautiful memorable songs
running non-stop in Tamil music channels or in tea shops near bus-stands. However,
Hari is not all guns blazing as he deftly handles more emotions in Koil and
Ayya.
The terrible failure of Saamy 2 for it generic formulaic storyline along the onset of covid wherein the general audience to be more acclimated to more types of stories as well different screenplays has led Hari to look for alternate options, or at least that is what we believed. The reviews coming in from his latest ‘Yaanai’ movie unfortunately do not seem to suggest that.
Another person whose career trajectory seems quite in line
and intertwined with Hari’s films is music director Harris Jeyaraj. Starting
out with the most popular ‘Minnale’ movie (whose songs are still evergreen) to
his rise with ‘Saamy’ movie songs (especially debuting with kuthu song Aarumuga Saamy) , his romantic peppy numbers were quite a rage
on any music channel/radiosin early 2000s and 2010s. However, the formulaic mix
like Hari’s movies have failed to generate the excitement that it earlier used
to.
Their combination was one of the most sought after in their
hey-days and the strong belief is that both of them will bounce back together soon. Old
is Gold sometimes!!
