Bale Pandiya aims to be an action-comedy but doesn't blend the comedy and action well enough. While movies in the genre usually deliver light action separated by doses of comedy, the film separates the two completely. The comedy is effective and the action is good but the transition between the two isn't smooth and so the film on the whole feels like it is less than the sum of its parts.

Pandiyan(Vishnu) has been dogged by bad luck throughout his life. So he approaches a dada AKP(Amarendran) and requests him to kill him. The rowdy suggests a plan that would be mutually beneficial to both of them - Pandiyan, after 10 days, will make himself a human bomb to destroy the location where a big meeting is planned. But in the 10 days left for him to live, Pandiyan meets Vaishnavi(Piaa) and as he feels things turning around for him, he gets back his will to live.

The film milks quite a few laughs out of Vishnu's perennial bad luck. Starting with the animated opening credits, the sequences that detail his cursed life are quite funny. Some of the punchlines are unexpected(like his attempt to take the trailer bus) and some are not(like his first attempt at romance) but even the punchlines where we see what is coming don't fail in eliciting a smile. The romance between Vishnu and Piaa maintains the tone as it is developed in a light-hearted manner and is sweet enough to get us to believe that it is the main catalyst in the transformation in Vishnu's view of life.

Vivek's track initially makes us wonder if its a take-off on Madharasapattinam as he arrives from London looking for a girl, armed with only a photo. But the rest of the track isn't clever enough to support this idea. The comedian takes shots at the social habits of people in his usual way. But after a good start, both his accent and his routine begin to feel old pretty soon. But its nice that the director has atleast made an effort to integrate the comedy track into the main storyline by making Piaa the reason for his search and making him enter Vishnu's search for Piaa more directly towards the end of the movie.

The film suddenly turns into an action movie after the point where Vishnu and Piaa go to meet Amarendran. Its not that the action portions are filmed ineptly. There is a nice sequence where Vishnu follows Piaa's kidnappers using the sounds heard via her cellphone(Gibran is also allowed to show some thinking here after leaving Piaa's cellphone with her) and the fights between Vishnu and Gibran, both the one in Jayaprakash's house and the one on the ship, are picturized well. But the shift in tone from comedy to hardcore action is a bit too jarring to allow us to get immersed in the action. And with only 1 movie under his belt, Vishnu's transformation into a superhero who can single-handedly take on a trained assassin is a bit difficult to accept. But the movie does recover its comedy touch at the end with some very creative and funny closing credits.

Vishnu takes centerstage here after being part of an ensemble cast in Vennila Kabaddi Kuzhu and appears quite confident shouldering the responsibility. Comedy seems to come more naturally to him but he does well in the action scenes too. Piaa is cute as always though she has little to do other than look scared in the second half. Gibran Osman looks the part of the cold-hearted killer while Amarendran makes an impressive debut as a good dada. Happy... is an enjoyable number that features the singers on-screen while Sirikkiren... has some nice, colorful sets.