Directed by Tharun Moorthy, Thudarum is the story of a family that becomes a victim of institutionalized corruption. While going through the entire ordeal, they realize that the legal justice system was such that it often only favored the rich and the powerful. So let’s find out the kind of obstacles a father had to face in order to get justice for his son and take revenge on the perpetrators of this corruption.
Spoiler Alert
Why was Benz’s car confiscated?
Shanmugham, aka Benz, loved his car, a black Ambassador Mark 1, as much as he loved his children and wife. It was a vintage car, no doubt about that, but what made it even more special for Benz was that it was given to him by his boss/mentor, Palani Swamy, who used to be a renowned stuntman in regional films. Benz had worked on many films as Palani Swamy’s assistant, and he was still as passionate about the world of cinema as he was then. After an unfortunate incident, where Benz’s friend, Anbu, lost his life on the film set, Benz was forced to retire from the film business. The union blamed his mentor for the incident that had happened, and it could be said that Palani Swamy’s entire team was deprived of the means to earn a livelihood for themselves and their families. So that’s when Benz came back and started driving a taxi. There were people who got fascinated by that vintage car, and there were people who told Benz to stop wasting so much money on that obsolete piece of machinery. And then one day Benz’s car was confiscated by the local police as they suspected that a man named Maniyan, who worked at the local mechanic shop, was using it to smuggle marijuana. Benz went to meet SI Benny C. Kurian, but the arrogant and rude cop just wasn’t ready to let Benz retrieve his car even when the latter told him that he or his vehicle had nothing to do with the crime. Just before the car was confiscated, Benz’s son, Pavi, and his friends took the ambassador without Benz’s permission. They didn’t know how to drive properly, and that’s why Benz got really angry at them for being so reckless. Benz slapped his son in front of his friends, which really hurt the boy’s ego. Pavi didn’t talk to his father for days, and Benz, too, felt guilty for raising his hand against his son and losing his temper. To make matters worse, Benz got to know that his son had been missing for the past few days and nobody had any clue where he had gone. He went and registered an official complaint in the local police station, and CI George Mathan assured him that he would do his best to find his son. In contrast to SI Benny, George seemed to be a very helpful and kind person. He was the one who asked Benny to not stretch the matter and let Benz take his car back home. But little did Benz know at that moment in Thudarum that George was literally the most corrupt cop in the department.
How did Benz get to know about his son’s murder?
George was an excellent manipulator, but he also knew that what he had done would come out in the open sooner or later. Just before Benz could take his car and go back to his home, George asked him for one last favor. One of the cops’ sisters was getting married that day, and George asked Benz to drop him and Benny at the destination where the marriage was going to happen. Benz was hesitant, but he wasn’t given much of an option. Even Sudheesh, the bride’s brother, came with them, and the look on his face made it very clear that George was not revealing the entire truth. George asked Benz to take his car into the forest area, as he and Benny wanted to sit there and drink. Benz got really restless, and there came a point where he told the police officers that he wouldn’t take them any further. That’s when George concocted a story to tell Benz to calm his nerves. George said that Sudheesh’s sister, who was going to get married that day, had a psychotic lover who’d been blackmailing her from the day he got to know that she was going to get married. He said that that boy was threatening the poor girl by telling her that he would publish her compromising pictures on the internet. George said that Sudheesh’s father had gone and killed the guy and he was helping him to dispose of the body. He told Benz that the body of the blackmailer was lying in his car trunk and that he just needed to bear with them for a few more hours. George made Benz realize that it was all for a noble cause and he didn’t need to be worried about anything. But Benz, apart from getting scared for being a party to the crime, had this strange gut feeling. He knew that something was just not right. Benz never saw the dead body, but later, when he parked his car at his home, his dog started barking while standing in front of the car trunk. Benz still dismissed his fears and made himself believe that it was probably because there was blood in his trunk. But deep down, Benz knew that it was not so. Things became pretty clear when there was a landslide in the same forest region where George and Benny had buried that dead body. It came to be known that the body they had buried was not of the blackmailer, as George had stated, but of Pavi, Benz and Lalitha’s son. They both didn’t know how to process that information. To make matters worse, George and Benny decided to pin all the blame on Benz, as they weren’t ready to put their careers at risk. Moreover, George was going to retire in the next couple of days, and he didn’t want his reputation to get tarnished. They knew that it was easy to blame it all on a common man who didn’t have the resources to defend himself. What they did not know was that a common man had the power to uproot an entire system if his family’s safety was threatened.
Why did George kill Benz’s son?
George knew that he would be able to pin all the blame on Benz because he knew things about Benz’s past that could help him build his narrative. Pavi was not Benz’s biological son; he was the son of Anbu and Lalitha. Lalitha was married to Anbu, and after the latter’s death, Benz took the decision to marry and support her. Ben knew that the society would question him and judge his character, but still he was ready to face anything, as he knew that Lalitha and Pavi needed him at that moment. With time, Benz and Lalitha grew fond of each other, and the former never made Pavi feel like he was not his son. He treated both his children equally, which was why Pavi really respected the man. George told the media that Pavi used to physically abuse Benz’s daughter, because of which Benz had killed him in a fit of rage. George threatened Lalitha that if she or Benz tried to go against him, he would tell the world that Lalitha was Benz’s mistress. Benz knew that George would try to arrest him at all costs, and if that happened, he wouldn’t let him come out of the prison ever. So Benz decided to defend himself and fight till his last breath. He went and abducted Sudheesh, who told the former very truthfully that he hadn’t known anything about the matter. He said that when he sat in Benz’s car that night, that’s when he also came to know that there was a dead body in his trunk. Sudheesh very truthfully told Benz that George fabricated the entire story about his sister being blackmailed. While George was torturing Lalitha and her daughter, Benz went and abducted George’s daughter, Mary, as he knew that that was the only way he could make him listen to him.
In Thudarum’s ending, Benz got to know that Mary and Pavi had loved each other, and George had found out about it. George was literally a monster, and Mary was well aware of what he was capable of doing. The poor girl kept pleading with her father to not do anything to Pavi, but George didn’t listen. He took Pavi into custody and beat him to death. He was such a cruel man that he used Benz’s help to dispose of the dead body. Benz killed both Benny and George at the end and took revenge on them. Benny, as compared to George, was still a bit restrained in his approach. Although he supported George from the very beginning, he knew that what they were doing was not right. Also, Benny was somewhat apprehensive about what would happen once George retired. He was scared for his job, which was why he tried stopping George quite a few times, but that doesn’t absolve him from his sins.
Will Benz Be Charged With Murder?
Benz surrendered himself to the authorities, but the film left us on a sort of cliffhanger where it was not made clear if the bodies of Benny and George were found or not. The general assumption is that Benz will confess to his crimes and the law will show leniency towards him, as he had acted in self-defense, and yes, his actions were a bit extreme, but he had done everything to make the perpetrators pay for what they had done. A reporter at the end asks Benz if he had killed his own son. He told them that he hadn’t murdered Pavi, but then he was about to say something but stopped in between. He was going to say that he had killed his son’s murderers, but he didn’t mention that explicitly. So maybe the director would have felt that it was implied from there that the truth will come out in the open, or maybe Benz would never reveal that he had killed both the police officers. Mary had seen Benz kill her father, but I don’t think she would say anything in that matter because she knew her father had gotten what he deserved. Also, I believe Mary will start living with Lalitha, and the latter will accept her as her own daughter. But conspiracy theories aside, the film wanted to draw our attention to the number of honor killings that still happen in our country and how a majority of them go unreported. People sitting in powerful positions use the loopholes of the legal system to their advantage and have their way. It does not set the right precedent, but sometimes a man does not have any option but to take the law into their hands. Benz expected justice to be served, but when the entire system failed him, he had to take matters into his own hands.
