The cleanly written film is about a Chosen One. It is also a story about brothers, and a spy thriller. But these various strands don’t merge satisfactorily. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
Kingdom opens with a short story, and then tells a longer story set 70 years later. There are parallels. In the earlier timeline, the British are waging war on tribals in Sri Lanka in order to get their gold. In the newer timeline, the villains have changed but the oppression remains the same. An international smuggling cartel operating between Sri Lanka and Hong Kong is using the descendants of those tribals we saw earlier to smuggle gold biscuits. In both timelines, the fighting is brutal, with not just the men being killed but also women and children. And in both timelines, Vijay Deverakonda plays the leader. In the British era, he is the king of the tribe. And now, he is the Chosen One – and, of course, like all Chosen Ones, he is unaware of his destiny. When we first see him in the second timeline, he is a cop in a small village. His name is Suri.
Gowtam Tinnanuri builds his story slowly and surely. There is a scene that tells us Suri will stand up for the oppressed. There is a scene where Suri stands up to his superior, which tells us that he is not a coward. There is a scene where (after a slot of slapping), Suri himself is slapped by his mother. And this tells us that his home life is a mess. The mother still misses her older son, Siva, played as an adult by Satyadev Kancharana. Siva ran away as a young boy, and the family awaits his return. Jomon T John and Girish Gangadharan are the cinematographers. In this film filled with beautiful images, the shot of Siva running away into the night – a sliver of darkness in the midst of lights – is one of the more memorable frames.
The setup is solid. A mysterious government guy played by Manish Chaudhari takes note of Suri’s qualities and asks him to be part of an undercover operation that will take him to Sri Lanka. If we ignore the fact that being a spy requires highly specialised training, we still have a story with much juice in it. We have a spy thriller with a double-cross-angle. We have the plotline with Suri and Siva. And we have the mythical narrative about the Chosen One. We have Anirudh’s percussion-heavy score heightening the action. And above all, we have Vijay Deverakonda in a good part after a while. The actor uses both the strength in his body and the vulnerability in his eyes well, and the others around him (especially Satyadev and Venkitesh VP as the hammy bad guy) offer good support. Bhagyashri Borse plays the mandatory heroine. She plays the part about as well as a mandatory heroine can play the part.
But the film slowly begins to lose its grip on our emotions. We should be biting our nails about Suri getting caught. We should be weeping at the reunion of the brothers. We should be shocked at Suri’s reveal about why Siva really ran away. We should feel the same unease that Suri does when Siva and his band of tribals end up in serious trouble. But none of these moments land with the desired impact. Jersey is one of my favourite films, and Gowtam built the emotional arc scene by scene, moment by moment, until it all exploded at the end. In Kingdom, we get predictability. The writing is clean and uncluttered, but there are few surprises. Midway through the first half, some of you may guess that the interval point will happen when Suri the outsider is accepted as an insider by the tribe. And that is exactly what happens.
The film is watchable, but nothing more. Gowtam has a brilliant instinct for small flourishes. The way he shows a little girl turning into an old woman is just beautiful. The intercutting between Suri’s big reveal about Siva, and Siva projecting the same instinct elsewhere is nicely worked out. But the bigger set pieces don’t work as well. Some of the action (like the boat equivalent of a car chase) is good, but the huge scene that involves a British-era ship and Suri doesn’t give you the goosebumps it should. I missed the Gowtam who made Jersey, who would have given us a few wonderful scenes between the brothers in between all this heroism. I understand that he cannot be making soft, emotional movies all the time. But I hope the sequel that’s hinted at manages to capture the bigness of battle as well as the smallness of internal conflict. Essentially, for all the buildup about Kingdom being a spy thriller, it ends up being yet another spectacle about the hero becoming a one-man army.
