Aatti loses its most interesting character before it is halfway through, and never quite recovers. Set in the tea hills above 1970 Madurai, T. Kittu's period crime drama opens with Amaithi Raj (Esakki Karvannan), a quick-fisted inspector banished to a sleepy forest station, and Azhagu (Abi Nakshathra), the one educated woman in a tribal settlement, who runs a small school for its children. Then a new teacher, Selvam (Praveen Palanisamy), arrives, and it does not take long to see he is a creep who has set his sights on Azhagu. Soon he is found dead, and the case lands on Amaithi.
Selvam is also the only live wire the film has. Once he is gone, it slips into explanation mode, picking through how and why he died while a powerful brother in Madurai leans on the police. Neither the bored cop chasing a case nor Azhagu, used more as a vantage point than a force, gives what follows a pulse.
It is professionally made, a real point in its favour in this corner of cinema. Sibi Sadhasivam's camera finds genuine atmosphere in the misty estates, and at a brisk ninety-odd minutes the film never outstays itself. But too much of it takes the easy way out. A local legend of vigilante women, betrayed and beheaded back in the 1880s and said to linger in the forest, is something the film tells you about rather than makes you feel, and the score keeps promising a dread the scenes never deliver.
The performances hold up better than the writing. Abi Nakshathra is quietly effective, Esakki Karvannan a steady presence, and Praveen Palanisamy makes the most of a villain dispatched far too soon.
Everything here is in place except the one thing that matters most: a reason to lean forward.
