Azhagar, Sangu Ganesan, Murugan and AtoZ are four guys who have become friends by virtue of their lives having been destroyed due to lack of proper parental care. While Azhagar's father was responsible for his early introduction to cigarettes and drinks, Ganesan's father committed suicide after his mother eloped with a neighbor, Murugan was pushed away by both his parents and AtoZ was abandoned as a newborn. One of the people they rub the wrong way is a moneylender(Rajkapoor) and he takes his revenge by telling his friends (Nandha Periasamy, Ravi Maria) that Azhagar and their sister are in love. When a couple of misinterpreted incidents confirm this, the brothers hire a rowdy Pandi(Vikranth) to kill the four friends.

The film takes a long time to take off. There is a lot of screen time between the time we are introduced to the four protagonists and Vikranth and the point where their tracks intersect. So during this time, the heroes fall in love, help their families and show the strength of their friendship while Vikranth proves his ruthlessness by killing his targets. There are some nice segments(the friends' chase to retrieve some stolen money is fantastic with the part with the kids illustrating how early they are pulled into a lifestyle of violence) and sharp dialogs(like Azhagar's sharp responses to his parents). But a silly, unbelievable romance that is kicked off by the girl's dog urinating on the boy's face and the repetitiveness of the proceedings make us rather restless.

While the protagonists in similar films knowingly embrace violence due to personal reasons or necessity, the guys here are thrust into violence over something that isn't even true and that makes them quite sympathetic figures. So its easy to fear for them when they go on the run and cheer them when they decide to strike back. But the suspense is diluted by the long chases that seem to go on forever. The chases, whether through the narrow bylanes or the bare lands, are picturized well but test our patience. The point where Vikranth pushes away Nandha Periasamy just as he is about to kill one of the friends is a moment filled with suspense and surprise but there are not too many of those.

Goripaalayam tags a message about good parenting to its now-familiar story of youth being sucked into a life of violence. The story is bookended by voiceovers pushing this message forward but the sequences that occur as part of the story, whether its Azhagar snapping at his dad, insulting his sister to the point where she walks out of the house or Murugan being sent away by his mother, are more effective in rubbing in what the four of them have missed in life and how it has affected their lives.