Kodiyil Oruvan is written and directed by Ananda Krishnan and produced by Infiniti Film Ventures and Chendur Films International. It stars Vijay Antony and Aathmika in the lead roles, and Ramachandra Raju, Prabhakar and Shankar Krishnamurthy play important supporting roles.

The film begins with a poor woman being chosen as a party's candidate for the upcoming Panchayat elections.  She is expected to follow the orders of the party after winning, but she decides to be honest for the welfare of her village. This irks the party members and they attack her while she is 8 months pregnant. She somehow survives and gives birth to Vijayaraghavan (Vijay Antony), and wants him to become a Collector/IAS officer. Whether he manages to achieve it and the hurdles he faces forms the rest of the plot.

Vijay Antony gets a MGR-like introduction where he helps the elderly people in his village, and bonds well with them. The film begins pleasantly and makes you root for him as he progresses in his journey to become an IAS officer. The way he helps the kids in his housing board and makes them realise the value of education has been portrayed beautifully.

The treatment isn't preachy and has a lot of masala moments, in a good way. This makes the first half quite engaging. Nivas K Prasanna's background score is heavily filled with portions from songs, and that is also one of the plus points of the film.

The film however takes a predictable path and a few edit decisions also doesn't help the film's cause. Vijay Antony comes up with a measured performance but the other actors don't leave much of an impact. Ramachandra Raju of KGF fame, who has a mass screen presence is looking underutilized. Aathmika performs decently in a role that's not fleshed out properly.

The entire film banks on the mother son sentiment, and the chemistry between Divya Prabha and Vijay Antony works well. There's a feeling that the drama becomes melodrama at one point but it can be forgiven. In spite of few flaws the treatment overshadows them.

The message conveyed by the film is quite an important one, as it portrays the reality of slums with perfection. It tracks down how the youngsters get into alcoholism and drugs. There's also an interesting rowdies vs politicians angle that could have been explored deeper.

Overall, there are few lacklustre performances that pull down the film's effectiveness. The writing could have been more solid, but despite all this, the film tries to entertain you well throughout. A decent watch for the weekend.