Ponniyin Selvan: Part One

Ponniyin Selvan: Part One

The Chola kingdom is under threat from forces both internal and external, and with crown prince Aaditha Karikalan, his younger brother Arunmozhi Varman and the emperor, Sundara Cholar separated by situations, it is up to a messenger to ensure the safety of the kingdom. Can he succeed in his mission, especially with Karikalan's former girlfriend, Nandhini, plotting to bring down the entire Chola empire?

  • Released: 2022-09-30
  • Runtime: 167 minutes
  • Genre: Action, Drama, History
  • Stars: Vikram, Jayam Ravi, Karthi, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Trisha Krishnan, Sobhita Dhulipala, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Prakash Raj, Prabhu, R. Sarathkumar, Vikram Prabhu, Jayaram, Rahman, R. Parthiban, Jayachitra, Ashwin Kakumanu, Lal, Nassar, Kishore, Nizhalgal Ravi, Riyaz Khan, Mohan Raman, Arjun Chidambaram, Vinodhini Vaidyanathan, Balaji Sakthivel, Sara Arjun, Babu Antony, Master Raghavan, Gopi Kannadasan, Ashwin Rao Pallakki, Vijayakumar, Yoge Jappie, Makrand Deshpande
  • Director: Mani Ratnam
 Comments
  • tazkiaarusa - 12 May 2023
    Could have been a great movie if well executed!
    If you want to waste your time scratching your head and then getting into a confusion daze, wait no more and watch this movie... what a miserable waste of 3 hours of your life! The storyline was not clearly executed, took forever for the characters and their roles to be clear and the action was poor. Sadly the parties were not clearly distinguished!

    It could have been more interesting to watch if the playback was smooth, if the cast was strong and the plots were properly played!

    I don't know about others but my husband and I did not clearly enjoy it. We were so bored, that we were praying for the movie to be over!
  • sree-24222 - 10 March 2023
    Not worth
    Always it's a challenge to make a novel into a movie, if you ask did it meet the expectations, definitely not. Selvaraghavan would have been best to handle such kind of story. While establishing an empire with war scene, being a veteran director, Mr. Maniratnam should have known that the scene should have been constructed in such a way that audience remembers it for long. However, the fight and war scenes are very amateur for such a periodical film. Just converting a challenging story into a movie is not enough, you should make efforts to keep the audience glued to their seats on each and every scene.
  • tanvirahmedapu0 - 8 December 2022
    Extra 2 hour long or 2 hour too short
    Many did read the story but as someone who didn't read it before, I was very interested in the movie. To see a new periodic drama and learn something from the culture. But the movie is too slow and carries a lot of unnecessary elements or they couldn't make any sense.

    Almost every performance was also every 1 dimensional and after entire 3 hour story did a little bit progress that can be achieved by 40 minutes.

    Also the hindi dubbing was just crap and worst then Pravas doing his Hindi dubbing for movies.

    I finished the movie in 3 days, longest time I gave for any movie. Just a waste of time.
  • ankit-imsnoida - 15 November 2022
    Not worth the hype
    The Bollywood is making such trash movies that PS 1 looks amazing in front of that. Although, as a stand alone movie it's quite below average. Apart from great sets, VFX, etc ..the movie doesn't do much.

    Even after watching the movie for 60-70 mins, I personally didn't feel any connection with the characters. Unline Game of thrones where strong characters were built slowly.. here the character development is super rushed.

    We know the movie is based on a war for a throne but you actually don't feel like cheering for anyone. It's so dull in its narration that you don't feel invested enough to take a side and cheer for that character.

    Aishwarya was the shining star who did a decent job in the movie. The main character (messenger) was damn irritating.

    If you don't have any context of the history or the books, it'd become even worse for you.

    I don't understand the hype at all.
  • dheepak10 - 8 November 2022
    A massive waste of Talent!
    What could have been India's Game of Thrones is made into an ambiguous, convoluted mess. The screenplay is partly to blame but the direction is utterly poor.

    Scenes which are supposed to convey how smart and adept Vanthiyathevan is, is shown like a comedy sequence. In fact, almost all scenes with Karthi involved is made to look like a comedy movie.

    Why Jayaram's role is key to the story and how he is well known is not clear at all. The same goes for multiple characters who can be introduced in a whim, on screen.

    While the movie has a 150 minute run time, this is a case where the audience wouldn't have minded a 180 minute runtime with more depth into the characters and story.

    The action scenes have 3 set-pieces which are repeated. In fact the battle scenes could have been avoided altogether as there was nothing to see in those.

    What could have been a masterpiece in more capable hands becomes just a massive waste of talent!