- Overview
5 People, 4 Lifestyles, 3 Murders, 2 Hours, 1 Revenge. The story takes around five persons who are interconnected through life situations, plotted in a house.
- Release Date
26 August 2016
- DirectingA Ragavendra Prasad
- Budget
$0.00
- Revenue
$0.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moretimesofindia
23 June 2021
With a plot that could be described as Aalavandhan meets Funny Games/Naanal meets The Dark Knight (the director credits Aalavandhan, Babel, Oldboy and Tarantino's films as his influences), Raghavendra Prasad's 54321 holds promise in its first half an hour. Anjali (Pavithra) is staying in a lonely house. Her husband Vinoth (Aarvin) is on his way home. A thief (Jayakumar) breaks into the place. And soon, another man enters, but with a sinister motivation. When Vinoth comes home, he finds the house in disarray. Soon, he comes face to face with the intruder, Vikram (Shabeer), with whom he shares a past. And Vikram wants Vinoth to murder a little girl he has kidnapped if he hopes to save his wife! This is the film's best stretch. It sets up the story and is also suspenseful. But then, we start getting the backstory — why is Vikram targeting Vinoth, why is the thief here, how did Vinoth and Anjali fall in love and so on — and the answer to each one of these questions is a disappointment. The romantic track is terribly corny, the story of the thief uninspiring while his actions in the present-day are unconvincing, and the Vikram-Vinoth conflict is feeble (a childhood rivalry). And the acting gives us the impression of watching a short film. Prasad does manage to compensate for the deficient writing through his filmmaking — the setting is largely a single room, but the director never makes us feel as if we are watching a video recording of a stage play. He keeps cutting from one character to the other in unpredictable ways to keep us on an edge, and the camera movements are quite fluid. One particular device he uses is the freeze frame every time he wants to cut to the flashback, though it gets tiresome after a point. But what is troubling is that the violence seems to be there just for the sake of it. Both Vikram and Vinoth's characters are underdeveloped. We hardly feel the dilemma that the latter undergoes. And the film, too, never truly addresses the moral question at the heart of its plot — what makes one evil and is there difference between one evil act and another.
More Like This
Fingerprints
Fresh out of rehab, a young woman moves back in with her parents and sister, and soon becomes involved in a mystery that has left people in her...
See more
The Woman in Question
Agnes "Astra" Huston, a fortune teller at a run-down fair, is found strangled in her bedroom. As the police question five suspects, their...
See more
Eye of the Tiger
Buck is a Vietnam vet, recently released from prison. He returns home to discover the town being terrorized by a vicious motorcycle gang. When the...
See more
McBain
Santos attempts to lead a people's revolt in Colombia to overthrow the Presidente. When his revolt fails and he is killed, his sister Christina...
See more
The Actress
The banker Vagif Fataliyev is found murdered in his own house. During the investigation, two more murders occur one after the other.
See more
Bluebeard
Baron von Sepper is an Austrian aristocrat noted for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. His latest spouse, an American...
See more
Tell-Tale
A man's recently transplanted heart leads him on a frantic search to find the donor's killer before a similar fate befalls him.
See more
An Actor's Revenge
In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago.
See more
Off-Piste
An ex-SAS recluse, living in the mountains of France to escape a traumatic past, is hunted down by those who's lives he has destroyed.
See more
Silent Witness
District Attorney Holden and his special investigator Betty Higgins are trying to convict brothers Joe and Lou Manson, silk-racket hoods, after...
See more
Son
When a young boy contracts a mysterious illness, his mother must decide how far she will go to protect him from terrifying forces in her past.
See more
The Banker
High-priced prostitutes are being systematically murdered, their corpses mutilated, and a bizarre South American symbol painted in blood is found...
See more
Tales of Manhattan
Ten screenwriters collaborated on this series of tales concerning the effect a tailcoat cursed by its tailor has on those who wear it. The video...
See more
Final Examination
A burned out L.A. detective moves to Hawaii, where he stumbles upon a murder at a college sorority reunion.
See more
The Invisible Ray
Dr. Janos Rukh discovers a certain type of radium that has almost magical healing properties. But the element has a dangerous side, too, and it has...
See more
The Ghost
A woman and her lover murder her husband, a doctor. Soon, however, strange things start happening, and they wonder if they really killed him, or if...
See more
The Haunting of Sorority Row
Samantha Willows, a college freshman, looks to pledge a sorority. Unbeknownst to Sam, it is haunted by a former pledge taking revenge on those who...
See more
BAB
In a dying 1950s town, a mysterious traveler propositions a young farmhand, Donnie, to help take down the town's tyrannical leader in exchange for...
See more