Starring: Vijay Sethupathi, Anurag Kashyap, Mamta Mohandas, Natarajan Subramaniam, Abhirami, Divya Bharathi
Director: Nithilan Saminathan
This Tamil action thriller streaming on Netflix with subtitles and also in Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada stands out for its male leads – Vijay Sethupathi and Anurag Kashyap – who are well entrenched in their pan-Indian multilingual appeal.
Maharaja (Sethupathi) is a barber and simple family man, devoted to his wife (Bharathi) and little daughter. Their uneventful life is turned upside down when Selvam (Kashyap) walks into his shop for a shave and freshen up on the orders of his wife (Abhirami), who wants him to spruce up for their own little daughter’s birthday party.
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Unbeknownst to his family, Selvam is harbouring some dark secrets as a robber which will soon be exposed as he accidentally misplaces his daughter’s precious gold chain birthday gift in Maharaja’s barber shop. While all of this plays out through multiple flashbacks, Maharaja sporting an injury on his right ear is pursuing a strange police complaint in real time – demanding that the officers in charge hunt down his missing “Lakshmi”. The only catch being that this Lakshmi is not human but an inanimate tin box. Why is Maharaja willing to suffer ridicule and even pay thousands of rupees in the hunt for this seemingly worthless object?
The premise of this suspense drama is not entirely ill-conceived, but its execution proves way too clever for its own good. The multiple flashes back and forth in the storyline result in an editing nightmare that has the undesired effect of the audience failing to empathise with any of the characters. Some of the brutal violence also feels quite unnecessary and gratuitous.
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While both Sethupathi as the good guy and Kashyap as the baddie are ideally suited to their roles, they end up falling prey to the jerky and patchy storytelling. Relying entirely on the former’s ear injury as the prop designed to hold on to the plot flow proves less than effective. Hence, when it is time for the big reveal at the end, the really quite satisfying outcome is overshadowed by the meandering journey that preceded it.
