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Jagamey Thanthiram - Hype worthy?

 



Jagame thanthiram is an action gangster movie directed by celebrated director Karthik Subburaj (Jigarthanda fame) and the lead role Suruli is done by Dhanush. No one else seems to be worth mentioning because of how poorly their characters were written. 


The plot is simple. It’s a typical gangster movie trope that has worked wonderfully for many movies in the past, including Dhanush’s own Vadachennai. Suruli is a gangster in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. A really big and notorious London gangster Peter Sprott (played by James Cosmo, 997th  Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch) recruits Suruli to finish off his opponent Sivadoss, who is his rival gangster in London. But soon Suruli finds out Peter has ulterior motives behind hiring him. What happens next is pretty much the movie.

 

The movie starts with the introduction of the three main characters Peter Sprott - who is established as a mad racist, Sivadoss - a Sri Lankan London gangster and Suruli - a gangster/goon in the outskirts of Madurai. With Suruli’s introduction we can sense there is something wrong with the movie. The intro felt so long and the one liners didn’t land properly and the total scene was off. The apparent parallels between the introduction scenes of Peter and Suruli was like an “Aha” moment - but not anything remarkable. And it felt very weird and unrealistic how a London gangster rolling in millions recruits a local goon he has never heard of just based on a software engineer’s appraisal ramblings. It wasn’t just illogical. It was kind of stupid.


Peter, who has been established as a racist in the introduction scene rarely acts racist except for a few lines of dialogue. Nothing about the part where Suruli digs details about Sivadoss seems convincing enough. Even though we can ignore logic in these kinds of movies, it seemed way too absurd. The flow of the movie is very much staggered because of the second hour of the movie. The first half was style over substance, and then when the director suddenly talks about the Eezham issue it does not fit well with the rest of the movie. It feels like Subburaj took a pretty typical but entertaining gangster movie, and stripped away all the entertaining parts, and compressed it into the first half, and then made an emotional/socio-political movie, stripped away all it’s entertaining parts and compressed it into the second half.

 

The movie should have been a drama movie if the main focus is going to be the Eezham issue or else they should have made a fun gangster movie with action and guns and funk. There is nothing wrong with a funky gangster movie as long as it is entertaining. Jagame thanthiram falls in between. No one could take the second half seriously after watching the first half. Even though shifting the genre in second is a trademark of Karthik Subburaj, it doesn’t seem to work out. The only time the genre shifting worked out was in Jigarthanda. At least 30 mins could have been trimmed out of this movie, even if Subburaj was dead set on mixing genres. It was really unnecessary for this movie to be this long.

 

Dhanush's performance as Suruli was really good. He did his best to portray the character. After watching Karnan where Dhanush gave one of his best performances, a movie like this was needed to chill. It was unfortunate that the movie turned out be bad. Joju George as Sivadoss was very good. He played a convincing gangster with ethical codes. But the character didn’t have any impact, but the fact that it was the second best character in the movie is quite horrifying. Aishwarya Lekshmi as Attila did her part, and the song with which she is introduced was refreshing. Santhosh Narayan’s bgm felt good at some parts but didn’t really have an impact on other parts. The making of the much-hyped song “Rakita Rakita” was such a huge disappointment. James Cosmo as Peter Sprott, was not even close to being good, though Cosmo is a good actor. When Karthick Subburaj said he approached Al Pacino and Robert de Niro everyone got really hyped but the character was unbelievably bad. Another minor disappointment was when a London goon spoke with a distinctively American accent. The one plus point is that the cinematography was really good, especially in the climax fight. The palette was typical Subburaj most of the time, which was quite enjoyable, and reminded of both Petta and Jigarthanda.

 

Dhanush tried his hardest to carry this movie on his shoulders but it just didn’t work out. The  movie was such a disappointment for both Karthick Subburaj fans and Dhanush fans.


The movie is available to watch on Netflix, though Aviyal would suggest you not to bother.


“என்ன தோக்கடிக்க ஒருத்தன் மட்டும் வருவானே! 

மன்னிக்கணும் மாம்ஸு.

அட அவனும் இங்க நான்தானே!”

This was true.



Hariesh and Mozhi, (20 June, 2021)

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