Jagame Thandhiram Review: A Must Watch Only For Dhanush Fans

Cast: Dhanush, James Cosmo, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Kalaiyarasan and Joju George

Director: Karthik Subbaraj

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Dhanush’s effervescence is undeniably infectious. A few of Karthik Subbaraj’s trademark directorial prospers are passably arresting. Neither is, nevertheless, capable of assist Jagame Thandhiram surmount the upshots of a slapdash script and a punishing runtime.

Jagame Thandhiram, streaming on Netflix, is sporadically enlivened by the lead actor’s dynamic presence and the surfeit of color and vitality that the director injects into it. The drawback is that the high-voltage Tamil crime drama aspires to bigger socio-political significance than its normal gang warfare thriller format has the scope for.

The hero of Jagame Thandhiram, gangster Suruli (Dhanush), is not any paragon of advantage. A wily younger man in a violent world, he’s a thug with no ethical compass. He will cease at nothing, not even homicide and betrayal, to get what he desires. As the 158-minute movie unfolds, the anti-hero makes his method by way of a lot blood and bile earlier than he’s assailed by a modicum of guilt and compelled to hunt redemption. Neither the method nor its fruits is exceptionally thrilling.

If something, Suruli’s uneven story represents an unpersuasive arc. It is palatable solely if you’re keen to show a blind eye to the facile nature of his new-fangled activism. He abruptly wakes as much as the plight of undocumented Sri Lankan Tamil refugees – one in every of them has washed dishes throughout Europe over a interval 18 years till the hero befriends him and hires him because the supervisor of his newly-opened London restaurant – and mutates into an armed-to-the-teeth anti-racism crusader within the UK. The transformation of the rowdy is unfair and devoid of psychological authenticity.

When we first meet Suruli, he (in off-white formal ethnic apparel) pumps 4 bullets into a person on a practice that he stops on his method to his marriage ceremony. Before he pulls the set off, he playfully asks the sufferer to assist him perceive the distinction between ‘betrothal’ and ‘consummation’. The reply doesn’t fulfill Suruli and the hapless man is shipped packing. If this does not present a foretaste of what Jagame Thandhiram and the protagonist have lined up for us, nothing will.

There is extra. The nuptial is accomplished however the bride runs away when she learns the groom has simply dedicated cold-blooded homicide. Life provides the person one other probability and the subsequent factor we all know is that the fearless Suruli is out on a limb doing the bidding of a London crime lord Peter Sprott (veteran Scottish actor James Cosmo).

The mobster – in an early scene, he lets on that he’s a supporter of Millwall FC, one in every of England’s most despised soccer golf equipment owing to the hooliganism of its infamous followers – presents Suruli some huge cash to relocate to London for a month and remove an underworld rival Sivadoss (Joju George), a Sri Lankan Tamil underworld boss who smuggles arms and gold to be able to fund – that is revealed late within the movie – a much bigger trigger.

Suruli doesn’t converse or perceive a phrase of English. His conversations with Peter are facilitated by a go-between and interpreter Vicky (Sharath Ravi). The preliminary exchanges involving the three males yield a little bit of mirth however the comicality of the language divide is stymied as a result of the script opts for simultaneous and nearly totally muted Tamil-English translations because the garrulous Suruli holds forth.

Even as he woos nightclub singer Attilla (Aishwarya Lekshmi), Suruli worms his method into the inside circle of the xenophobic Peter. Of course, anti-immigrant sentiments are usually not unprecedented within the UK however the strategies that Surali employs to quell it undoubtedly are. The transient that the unscrupulous mercenary has is to infiltrate the Sivadoss gang and disrupt its actions.

Suruli’s thoughts is as fickle because the proverbial English climate. It doesn’t assist that the screenwriter – director Subbaraj himself – isn’t fairly certain what he desires to convey by way of ‘the methods of the world’ that he dramatises in Jagame Thandhiram. The inconsistences that plague the lead character rob his warfare towards racial hate of significant context.

Other warfare zones – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan – are talked about, however it’s the strife in Sri Lanka that will get delight of place in Jagame Thandhiram. It doesn’t, nevertheless, do the trigger any good as a result of all that the movie does is trivialise a critical situation.

When he first units his eyes on Attilla, who croons a Tamil movie music in a London pub, Suruli says to Vicky even earlier than she begins singing: “She’s gorgeous. I think she is from Tamil Nadu.” There is clearly no hyperlink between the 2 quick sentences – one articulates an statement, the opposite conveys a presumption. As far as off-the-cuff remarks go, this one doesn’t go too far, like a lot else within the movie.

At the top of the efficiency, by which era the viewers is aware of what Attilla’s mom tongue is, Suruli, not but as well-versed with issues geopolitical as he’s quickly going to be, asks the girl whether or not she is a Tamilian from Tamil Nadu. Not all Tamilians are from Tamil Nadu, Attilla replies. At this level, Suruli is in no place to know the import of that retort. In truth, he has no qualms over being a employed gun for a person whose automobile numberplate has ‘White Power’ carved on it.

A couple of hours down the road, the quick-on-the-uptake protagonist figures out that “home isn’t where you are born, it’s where you feel alive”. He admits to Peter, described by one character as “racist, supremacist, nativist”, that again residence he was no completely different. He, too, hated outsiders. But now in a land not his personal, Suruli has a much more beneficiant view of people who find themselves much less lucky than him, having been pressured by warfare to flee their homeland.

The tedium is lessened considerably by the ebullience of Dhanush and the solidity that Joju George lends to the character of Sivadoss. James Cosmo makes the many of the over-the-top high quality of the larger-than-life villain that Peter Sprott is. The different actors, together with Aishwarya Lekshmi, are saddled with largely decorative roles devised as sounding boards for the hero.

Packed with motion and darkish humour, the thriller throws some imply punches. Not all of them land proper. Certainly not the “war between ideologies” flip that Jagame Thandhiram takes after numerous blood has been spilled. This is one twist too many for an over-stirred concoction already bursting on the seams and struggling to maintain all of the splinters collectively.

A should watch just for Dhanush followers. Jagame Thandhiram is neither Asuran nor Karnan. Reset your expectations and it would simply go muster.