It's fairly impossible to craft an action-thriller suited to the Tamil sensibilities without acknowledging its audience. Lokesh Kanagaraj does a pretty amazing job of staying true to the pure action genre in Kaithi. It's that action thriller with a lot of heart. As we saw in Kanagaraj's earlier venture Maanagaram, Kaithi too has interweaving storylines. But the treatment is what renders it engaging throughout. It's a long film (153 minutes or so) yes, but the story moves at such a rapid pace that the audience remains consistently hooked. To put it across in a funny way, Kaithi is the kind of film where there's so much happening at breakneck speed that a viewer who's about to open the lid of a water bottle to hydrate himself/herself may hold back from doing so, till the end of another elaborate set-piece.

And when we talk about set-pieces, their crafting is stunning (though exaggerated at times). Anbariv is the man behind these well-thought-out sequences that often raise the levels of adrenaline in the audience. Sathyan Sooryan (the DOP of Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru) handles the cinematography - Kaithi has been shot entirely in the night (except for the last few frames) and yet, everything that unravels in artificial light looks good on screen. The background score by Sam CS definitely ups the style element of the film, and it's one soundtrack you'll want to check up on YouTube or SoundCloud immediately once you're done watching.

There are no songs or sappy romances in Kaithi - well, that's how an action thriller ought to be. I appreciate Kanagaraj for doing away with these unnecessary commercial elements, even when there are numerous 'invincible mass hero' moments. It's wonderful how Kanagaraj has given emphasis to characters other than that of Karthi's Dilli. George Maryan, who is relegated to comical roles in most films, gets a meaty character with a fair bit of action - he does a brilliantly memorable job of it! Narain, whom we're seeing in movies after a while, is wonderfully restrained and lets Karthi shine in the scenes that are for the whistling fans. Dheena offers some comic relief in the form of pop-culture references and lightens the tone of the otherwise serious flick.

At the core, there's also a story about a father who's travelling to meet his daughter for the first time. While this amps up the sentimental quotient, certain scenes such as the one featuring the crushed earrings, could have been written better (or completely subverted). There isn't any suspense as the important twisty bits are given away in the opening (half) itself, but Kanagaraj's packaging works wonders here. The action bits are strongly done, and that's a more-than-good reason to watch Kaithi. Well, how often do you see a lungi-clad hero using a Gatling gun?