O2 Movie Review

Nayanthara’s O2 comes off as a survival thriller that has an interesting plot, and keeps coming at us with well-shot sequences one after the other. The film has Nayanthara headlining a plot which we usually see in Hollywood films, and there is something that keeps pushing the film ahead with the use of characters and situations that it has.

O2 follows the story of Parvathy (Nayanthara) and her 8-year old son Veera (Rithvik), who suffers from cystic fibrosis. The son having a breathing problem is the USP of the film, along with the situation where the bus they travel in falling off a cliff. The film is majorly built on the interactions between the people inside the bus, and how they finally end up fighting over the kid’s oxygen cylinder and more.

O2 makes use of this plot that it has in hand, and delivers some really good situations in the first half to set the stage of the film. As the film moves into the second half, director Viknesh makes use of the callback-type narrative to refer previous dialogues from his narrative and keep the story tied together. While this factor is good to see at first, it gets repetitive and pulls down the overall weight of the film later on. There is also a lack of logic, as the film stays biased to Nayanthara’s character who hardly suffers the downfalls that the other characters face in the film. While the lack of breath, claustrophobic atmosphere and the tension is felt for the other characters, the same is not felt for Nayanthara’s character and that turns as a downer for the film. However, there are a handful of good sequences in the film which make it work better.

Nayanthara is once again solid in this woman-driven film where she gets a strong part to play. There is a lot of strength with which she pulls off this character, which is possible only by her and very few else.

The cast has some good names such as Aadukalam Murugadoss, a couple trying to escape and others. But they all have only a lukewarm presence in the film and do not contribute much.

The music by Vishal Chandrasekhar and the editing by Selva are neat, without hammering the film much.

On the whole, O2 is a decent thriller that could be worth a watch on Hotstar this weekend. There are a good load of moments in here to keep us pinned for the runtime.  O2 Movie Review by Siddarth Srinivas

O2 Movie Review Rating: 3/5

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