Por Thozhil

Por Thozhil is a 2023 Indian Tamil-language crime thriller film directed by Vignesh Raja, who co-wrote the script with Alfred Prakash. The directorial debut of Vignesh, it stars R. Sarathkumar, Ashok Selvan and Nikhila Vimal as law enforcers seeking to apprehend a serial killer. The film was released theatrically on 9 June 2023 and became a critical and commercial success. Plot In 2010, Prakash, a newly appointed DSP trainee, is assigned to work with SP Loganathan by ADGP Mahendran. Loganathan reluctantly agrees to mentor him, along with the new technical assistant Veena. From Chennai, the trio set off to Tiruchirappalli to investigate the gruesome murder of a young girl in deep woods. The doctor concludes that the victim was strangulated from the front with an iron wire, when she was in a kneeling position with her hair pulled back and that the deep knife-like cut by the wire must have been caused by the strength of an oversized man. A hematoma on her neck reveals that the victim was knocked at specific pressure points on her sternocleidomastoid muscle to make her unconscious, following which she was kidnapped. The peculiarity of the case makes Loganathan anticipate a series of murders. As predicted, a few more young women are killed in the same manner and their corpses are left in the woods with one of whom being the daughter of a police constable. None of the victims had any connection or similarity except their ages (early-mid 20s) and the fact that they were killed in the same manner and abandoned in a secluded region within the radius of 4-5 km from their house. Over the course of their investigation together, Prakash and Loganathan begin to bond after initially being at loggerheads as each recognises the other's dedication to solving the murders. Prakash also starts liking the way Loganathan handles the case. Later, Loganathan infers from the modus operandi and the killer's choice of random women, that he must be a psychopath with inferiority complex, who compensates his low self-esteem by putting his victims in a submissive position with their eyes gazing right into his eyes, and murders them to vent out his pent-up anger on someone else.