Murthy(Prashanth) earns his living taking the rap for the misdemeanors of other people and the jail is his second home (come to think of it, it has to be his first home since we never see where he really lives!). Dhanushkodi(Raghuvaran) has sworn to kill ex-collector Ramanathan's(Vijayakumar) son and so, Ramanathan has transferred his son Santosh(Pravinkanth) to Mauritius while telling the world that he has run away. Wishing to save his son forever, he hires Murthy to act as his longlost son, hoping that Dhanushkodi would kill him. Murthy too accepts the gig since his lover Preeti(Jyotika) is Ramanathan's niece.

Director Pravinkanth proved in Jodi that he had a severe dearth of ideas when it came to depicting romance and he reiterates it here with a lacklustre romance between Prashanth and Jyotika. Jyotika going out at night decked in jewellery and Prashanth going to jail for her crime is the setting for the start of their romance and a fight to save her from rowdies cements it. There is absolutely no cuteness in the romance nor is there any evidence of chemistry between the leads. As for the other track in the story, the one that involves Raghuvaran's desire to kill Vijayakumar's son, it takes some time before we understand the full details of it. Whether this was the director's intention or the result of some bad editing, I do not know.

The story definitely has enough potential to be crafted in an entertaining manner. The setup of Prashanth posing as another man and being in danger(without his knowledge) certainly offers lots of oppurtunity for all aspects of a good 'masala' movie like comedy, romance and fight sequences. Though the movie has resorted to all these, the problem is that they are all shoddily done. The second half is a complete mess that creates numerous knots without any thought to unravelling them cleanly. The attempts on Prashanth and the meetings between Raghuvaran and Pravinkanth fail to generate any suspense and the number of coincidences the director resorts to in order to make things happen is mindboggling.

It is also clear that the director has struggled between keeping the movie lighthearted and serious. The plans and subsequent failure of Raghuvaran's goons to eliminate Prashanth(the sequence with the bomb in his car, for instance) are handled in a light vein. On the other hand, Raghuvaran's flashback and the actions of Pravinkanth seem to belong to a more serious, violent movie. Add to this a number of double intendre dialogs, usually targeted at Jyotika, at various places and the director's confusion over the intended target audience becomes clear.

Prashanth performs well and fights and dances with gusto. Jyotika doesn't have much to do. Director Pravinkanth takes on a key role before the camera too and the best that can be said of him is that he doesn't ham up the role too much though it does provide him lots of oppurtunity for that. Vijayakumar and Srividya are adequate while Raghuvaran, with an atrocious wig, plays a routine villain. A.R.Rehman gets by with tunes from his Hindi soundtracks but a couple of songs like Machiniye... manage to be catchy.