Suriya hits big time with his OTT offering

Nearly six months after the first OTT film ' Ponmagal Vandhal' was released in May end, the Net-based entertainment mode has become a rage all across India, especially its southern region. The Tamil filmdom took the lead with this pattern of entertainment, where subscribers were offered the luxury of watching brand new films releasing on a favourite TV screen in their homes. Into this scenario, over a week now, the OTT film ' Soorarai Pottru' ( Amazon Prime ) helmed by Sudha Kongara and starring Suriya and Aparna Balamurali has swept the audiences off its feet.

Released in all major languages and endowed with sub-titles, the movie, a loosely based biopic on Air Deccan founder, Capt G R Gopinath has cleared the test of the fans and equally that of the critics who have been by and large happy with the output.

The two big players of OTT – Amazon Prime and Netflix – with Zee joining the race came up with many films, in all languages in which popular stars of yore from Amitabh Bachchan to the latest crop like Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pankaj Tripathi, Radhika Apte, Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao etc rubbed shoulders with their southern counterparts like Suriya, Jyothika, Vijay Sethupathi and leading names from Malayalam and Telugu film industry like Nani and Sudheer Babu.

The case of Suriya is unique to the extent that he pioneered the trend in Chennai movie world for which he had to face a lot of opposition and resentment from the trade circles. He even had to endure threats of boycott for his future films which even attempted to influence the career of his equally successful brother, Karthi, a popular hero in both Tamil and Telugu film industries.

'Soorarai Pottru' which was rumoured to have been red-flagged by the Indian Air Force for a few of the scenes ultimately got released, missing an earlier release schedule of October ending. The so-called 'objectionable' scenes, which also got trolled on social media were also shown with a disclaimer. A set of energetic, high-voltage performances by the lead stars, backed up by a cameo type appearance by Mohan Babu has made this film a popular one. The rural setting, the passionate narration and a linear presentation has worked well in its favour, aver critics.