Sivappu is the kind of film that seems well-intentioned and sincere despite failing as a movie experience. The film is about the plight of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, and makes a case for being compassionate towards them, but it is less impactful than it should be. It is also manipulative and at times, feels exploitative, though the makers would claim that they only wanted to be a voice of Lankan Tamils and show their sufferings to the world.
The central character is Konaar, and it is played by Raj Kiran with the kind of dignity and compassion that he has brought to his recent characters. He is a father figure to Pandiyan, a hot-blooded young man who works on the site. This open-hearted man decides to take in 40 Sri Lankan refugees who have escaped from their camp in the hope of leaving to Australia only to be cheated by a middle-man. He decides to let them work in the building whose construction he is overseeing until he can find a way to make their dream possible. Meanwhile, Pandiyan falls in love with a refugee girl — Parvathy. They decide to marry, but an incident with a lascivious site engineer results in the refugees being discovered and being sent back to camp. Pandiyan helps Parvathy escape and Konaar reaches out to the minister whose site they are working on to get the lovers married. But the politician, who is facing defeat in an upcoming election, sees this as his chance to win back the voters.
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