Saani Kaayidham is a film written and directed by Arun Matheswaran and produced by Screen Scene Media Private Limited. The film has Selvaraghavan and Keerthy Suresh in the lead roles, while Murugadass, Kanna Ravi, Lizzie Antony and others play crucial supporting roles. The music is composed by Sam CS and the cinematography is handled by Yamini Yagnamurthy.

Ponni (Keerthy Suresh) and her family consisting of her daughter and husband Maari (Kanna Ravi) live in a hut due to extreme poverty. Ponni works as a policewoman and Maari works in a rice mill. One day, Maari gets ill-treated at work because of his caste and his desire for an old man to contest elections. This results in the mill owners inflicting violence on Ponni's entire family. How Ponni retaliates and what Sangaiya (Selvaraghavan) has to do with all this forms the rest of the story.

The right place to begin looking at Saani Kaayidham is probably director Arun Matheswaran's debut film, Rocky. Be it the treatment or the plot or the composition of frames, both films are pretty similar, and it could be said that this is the director's signature. Oh, and the film is also divided into various chapters with interesting names, and an epilogue and prologue as well.

However, compared to Rocky, the writing could have been better in Saani Kaayidham. It almost feels like an usual revenge drama, with the heroine killing villains one by one like ticking things off a grocery shopping list. There is very little justification to all these killings because the director doesn't establish the emotional bonding between characters properly. With a lot of gore and violence in every scene, our efforts to empathize with the leads also get cut short.

Rocky had Bharathiraja playing the main villain and his characterization was solid. Saani Kaayidham is set in a similar universe as Rocky, but none of the villain roles are strong. So even if you ignore the emotional aspects of the film and look at it as an out-and-out action film, the film doesn't offer you much. The predictable screenplay also affects the film's engagement.

However, technically the film is sound and solid. Yamini Yagnamurthy's camera work offers so much support to the script and her work tries so hard to camouflage the flaws in the writing. The choice of switching to a black and white tone often works well. The music by Sam CS is fantastic, especially towards the climax. His background score works in tandem with the sound design to create a unique soundscape for the film.

The big shining spots of the film are the leads - Selvaraghavan and Keerthy Suresh who play each other's perfect foil. Selva as Sangaiya is calm, composed and goes around wearing shorts just like a kid. On the other hand Keerthy carries Ponni effortlessly, reminding us of her performance in Mahanati. This will end up as one of her career best works.

Overall, technically Saani Kaayidham is a masterpiece, but the writing could have been better. Director Arun Matheswaran again proves as one of the directors to look forward to as the potential he has is amazing. His films have his signature all over the frames and this one does too.