On paper, the action-adventure story has a superb emotional core, but on screen, the film feels like disconnected scenes cut and put together. Everything lacks that little extra that transforms generic stuff into great stuff.
There is a terrific moment a few minutes after the interval point, where – centuries ago – a tribal leader named Kanguva (Suriya) makes a promise to a young boy. The boy wants something. Kanguva says that the boy can have what he wants – but first, Kanguva has to save his people, his race. The nature of this transaction – especially what the boy wants – is right out of mythology. I wondered why this huge moment, this epic moment was not the interval point. I wondered why it was placed after the interval. But then, look at the interval point. What I was talking about is a vulnerable, emotional, extremely specific moment, while the image at interval point is a triumphant-but generic moment, where Kanguva raises his sword and roars that war is coming. The image is all surface, and that’s what Kanguva is: a surface-level epic. It’s an action-adventure that wants to wow us with visuals, and it forgets that epics are really made of emotions.
The first thirty-odd minutes give tough competition to the varmam scenes in Indian 2. We meet a modern-day Suriya (named Francis), and for no apparent reason other than to be cool, he is a bounty hunter. His partner is Yogi Babu, his girlfriend is Disha Patani, and her partner is Redin Kingsley. These portions are so wannabe-hip that they’re painful to watch, with the screen being painted with graphics like in the early Shankar movies. At one point, when Francis and Co. are walking, we get a random graphic that says “5:30 pm” – because, apparently, it is vital that we know that this walking is occuring at half past five. Or maybe that’s a hint about what the duration of the film will feel like: five-and-a-half hours. I’m sorry. I try not to be troll-y in my reviews, but Kanguva, by Siva and team, is a movie that sorely tests the goodwill you are willing to grant something that has so much effort that’s gone into it.
Why do Kovai Sarala and her husband speak in American-accented Tamil? (Or is it Goa-accented Tamil?) Why is it funny that Yogi Babu is in a hot tub, with three women around him? What is the tonality you are going for if you cast Yogi Babu and Redin Kingsley as machine gun-toting bounty hunters? Does the audience still care about dancing-duets like “YOLO”, when we are itching to get to the bloody serious story that lies ahead? Why does the villain (Bobby Deol) have such a generic arc? Why are the action sequences filled with so much slo-mo that the visceral thrill of watching stunts is dulled so much? And whose idea was that crocodile attack, with the text “CGI” appearing at a corner of the screen? Did they want to ensure that no one thought that Suriya was fighting an actual, six-foot-long reptile?
The modern-day portions (with a debt to the X-Men movies, with superpowered mutants) have a boy as well, and again, there’s a solid emotional core between this man and boy, and the man and boy from the past. But all this emotion exists only on paper. On screen, the film feels like disconnected scenes cut and put together. There are no neat segues from one emotion to another, one action piece to the next, or from the quiet scenes to the loud ones. In fact, there are practically no quiet scenes. Everyone seems to be screaming all the time. I think they were going for a Viking-era effect, but that kind of epic is not just about epic decibel levels. Adding to the “why’s”, why do all the action sequences look so similar? Why is the older-era Suriya (whose character is barely developed) asked to deliver just one mode of dramatic performance, with the broadest of gestures? Because subtleties are not allowed in epics?
