The cop is a popular role for our heroes and almost our heroes have donned khaki at some point in their careers. While our top heroes like Suriya(in Singam) can still pull off the role with their charisma and screen presence, cop movies with second- or third-rung heroes need to do something different to stand out from the crowd. Vellore Maavattam, which sees Nandha play a policeman, fails to do that with its story of honest cop vs dirty politician.

Muthukumar(Nandha), after passing the IPS exam, has been appointed as the ASP in Vellore. His acts to clean up the town gain him the people's trust and approval and his personal life is also moving smoothly since he is all set to settle down with his girlfriend Priya(Poorna). Trying to help some people whose lands have been taken over makes him go up against Gurumoorthy(Azhagamperumal), who is close to the minister Nachiappan. The fact that his superiors are in cahoots with Gurumoorthy makes his job tougher.

Our heroes are usually already cops when the movie starts and the films are not overly concerned with how they got there. Though Vellore Maavattam only scratches the surface, it is still nice to see Nandha's path to become a cop as he passes the civil service exam and goes through the requisite training. Ofcourse, this is accompanied by other elements like romance and comedy. The romance is rushed and then shoved aside once Nandha and Poorna express their mutual feelings while the comedy with Mayilsamy is painful.

But the movie settles into disappointing predictability once Nandha takes up his job as ASP. As he rids the city of antisocial elements, gets threats from the minister's partner, tries to take him on and is pushed back by his superiors, the film contains every cliche that is associated with cop movies. Everything, right down to individual scenes(like the one where Nandha is made to wait by the minister's wife) and pieces of dialog(like those spoken when the villain's lorries are stopped for inspection), is predictable.

Though the proceedings are still cliched and predictable, the pace picks up a bit in the second half since Nandha is actually able to achieve something. He has a few people to go up against and this keeps things interesting since he doesn't use the same tactics against all of them. It is a relief that the film doesn't end with a tiring stunt sequence and/or monologue but the tactic employed by Nandha is so familiar that we wonder if anybody would still fall for it.

Nandha continues his stone-faced, low-key performance from Vandhaan Vendraan though he's on the other side of the law here. Its obvious that he has tried to be intense but he just comes off looking like he is disinterested. Poorna plays the typical cop's girlfriend role, falling in love and then disappearing until she's needed to threaten Nandha. The movie will count as one of Santhanam's failures in recent times with most of his comedy segments with his dad being crass and unfunny. The villains aren't very effective while G.M.Kumar disappears after the first few reels.