Vijayakanth movies have always had punch dialogs delivered by him and praise showered on him. With the actor now in politics, both those aspects seem to have increased several times over and that alone would make his latest film Engal Aasaan exciting only to his fans and party members. And the old-fashioned, simplistic storyline, the poor production values and the weak comedy track ensure that the movie doesn't offer anything else to a viewer not belonging to that group.

Mahendran(Vijayakanth) runs a bank in Neelakoattai. Surprised by the loans taken by the villagers, he realizes that Marthandan(Ramki) has duped the villagers by getting the loans under their name and informs the people of the same. Meanwhile Marthandan kidnaps Vasu(Vikranth), who his daughter Usha loves. Vasu's lover Viji arrives in Nellakoattai and Mahendran promises to help her.

We've been used to Vijayakanth appearing in larger-than-life roles like an Election Commissioner, a doctor and a policeman and so the fact that he is a simple bank manager makes Engal Aasaan a bit more grounded in reality than his other movies. The other characteristics of his movies, like the gravity-defying stunts, the fawning over him and the punch dialogs, are still there but the film's canvas is smaller. His goals - getting back the villagers' lands and getting Vikranth and his lover married - are more modest than saving the country or fighting terrorism and his villain is just an unscrupulous landlord. This makes the film seems a little less tacky than his other ventures.

The focus on Vikranth's romance and the long comedy segments make one feel like Vijayakanth's role is more of a glorified cameo. He has some stand-alone scenes where he helps the people and outwits the local MLA but these feel like disjoint segments added to glorify him. But once Vikranth is kidnapped, Vijayakanth does move to center-stage. The flashback fills in the blanks with regards to his enmity with Sheryl(she is supposed to be the Chairman but of what I was never sure) and gives him the chance for some romance and in the present, he finally gets to act to solve both issues before him. How he solves them isn't very interesting though.

The separate comedy track(it gets a flimsy link to Vijayakanth late in the film) has been penned by the producer himself and so gets a lot of screen time. Unfortunately its quality doesn't seem deserving of that time. The track, which has Senthil and Ganja Karuppu as a father-son pair of thieves has a good start with the 'sand smuggling' episode delivering an unexpected, funny punchline. But its all downhill from there as the subsequent episodes range from being really crass(like the bathroom sequences at the police station) to being pointless and boring(like most other episodes).

Vijayakanth is really stout and as a result, he looks awkward and funny doing all those wire-fu stunts. Even his punch dialogs aren't very convincing or fiery and its high time he becomes a full-time politician. Sheryl probably dreamed that her character would become another Neelambari but the weak role and her poor acting make sure that will not happen. Vikranth gets relegated to the sidelines once he is incarcerated but as always, reminds us strongly of Vijay in the little time he gets. Ilavarasu is natural and convincing as always, even when he is forced to shower platitudes on Vijayakanth in every other line.