Truth is stranger than fiction; so goes the popular axiom.

Captain Gopinath’s ‘Simply Fly’ seems to have triggered writer director Sudha Kongara to make it into a feature film with the necessary commercial trappings. For someone who wants to become an aviation tycoon meant specially for the downtrodden, the opening scene must be shocking. Probably, it is to emphasize the South India’s, especially, the Tamil cinema’s favorite Madurai Culture; the scene graphically shows a dead body is carried to the pedestrian crude (folky!) dance and beats of a song where the hero is the main dancer. But, he is the one who worked in Air Force and dreams to start flight for the underprivileged.

The trials and tribulations faced by him right from finance to the bureaucracy, corporate villains and destiny and how he finally could make the ‘common man’ fly for ‘just one rupee’.

May be my view is wrong. I would say it is not even a tall dream; tallest dream. It is not just like as shown in the movie by comparing a dosa price in Udipi Hotel with that one of Five Star Hotel; even that was at no point sold for one rupee; but something much more than that.

Air Deccan survived for some time and later incurred very heavy losses and merged with Kingfisher which also closed the market at one point.

As a movie to provide morals like ‘follow your dream’, ‘respect yet insult your father and love your mother’, ‘think big’, and make efforts in haste and anger so that at one point the stupidity is transparent. Well. For making a Tamil movie, all these spices are indispensable.

It is a full-fledged showcase for Suriya’s histrionics. He does justice to it in no uncertain terms. Aparna Balaji, a staid looking girl as his wife is an equally quirky girl with lot of arrogance. A few high voltage melodramas with the mother and son and the hero begging each traveler in the airport for money to upgrade his air ticket look more silly than sympathetic. So is the scene where the village crowd the bank for funding him to start the business.

The present day film songs are absolutely not my cup of tea. So no comments.

Fairly long film and it makes you feel restless after a point with no resolution in the horizon.

‘Soorari Pottru’ is all the way Suriya’s film can also be called ‘Suriyavai Potru’. On show at Amazon Prime Video.