Even thrillers in Tamil usually follow a safe route with atleast one protagonist who the audience can side with and one or more guys lined up against him. Sindhanai Sei is a pleasant surprise in that it doesn't adopt this safe route. A dark, well-plotted crime thriller, it is not completely original but it still stands apart from other films in the genre by virtue of the fact that none of its main characters are good or even likeable.

Aadhi(Yuvan), having been kicked out by his wife Gayatri(Madhu Sharma) who found out that he cannot give her what she wants in life, is dejected and all set to return to his village. Its then that he meets Pazhani(Sashanth) and Cheenu(Bala), his classmates from school. The former works in a bank while the latter is a scamster. The three of them see a life of the crime as the only way to get rich and start off with some petty thefts. But unhappy with the returns from that, they decide to go after a bigger score by robbing a bank.

Following one of the rules of what makes a good novel, the movie pulls us in with the first scene as we see the three protagonists all set to rob the bank. It then gives us their backstories. These stories aren't particularly interesting but they do their job of showing how the three nondescript guys got to where they are now. Its not until the movie ends that we understand the full extent of Yuvan's motives and plans but the story arcs that take the three of them to the brink of a bank robbery are believable.

The heist itself is short but clever. While heist movies usually show us the planning and then fill in some gaps after the fact, Sindhanai Sei shows the entire planning only afterwards. This allows for a couple of good surprises during the job. The police unravels the plan surprisingly quickly but then come to a standstill.

The plan the men hatch after the heist doesn't make much sense. It doesn't serve much purpose and would only postpone the situation they want to escape. It would've made much more sense for them to go their separate ways with equal portions of the loot. But if we put aside the logic behind their decision, it does pave the way for an engrossing story of greed and betrayal. The storyline is heavily inspired by the Hindi flick Johnny Gaddar(which itself was inspired by those pulpy James Hadley crime novels and wore its inspiration proudly on its sleeves) but contains interesting twists and turns as the men sacrifice friendship and morals in their pursuit of money.

The proceedings are dark as all the protagonists are revealed to be cut from the same cloth and this provides a difference from the usual 'good triumphs over evil' storyline that our films follow. The screenplay is quite unpredictable and while the first incident itself shows us where things are headed, the route to get there isn't always clear. This is mainly because the story is developed based on little things, like a bottle or an offhand comment, that tend to escape our notice initially but become crucial to subsequent developments. Even the loot's hiding place is presaged by a sarcastic comment during the game of 'spin the bottle' earlier.

The movie feels a little stretched towards the end as the developments become predictable but it still takes its time to get to them. But the final two developments are nice surprises. While the first is darkly clever and very unexpected, the second provides sadly ironic proof that crime doesn't pay.

The actors fit their roles. They are not experienced enough to convey the internal conflicts, if any, about their actions but they are convincing as they go from average joes to hardened criminals not averse to double-crossing their friends and worse. Madhu Sharma makes an impression because of her impulsive character but its the actress who plays the wife of one the guys who seems more at ease in front of the camera. The song based on the title works well in the background where it is used but the other numbers, especially the solo numbers picturized on Yuvan, are unnecessary.