Jagame Thandiram Review

Karthik Subbaraj has always been a critics darling with his quirky style of filmmaking and well-intentioned cinematic ambitions however this time around with his new Netflix crime drama Jagame Thandhiram, Subbaraj finally seems to have got hold of his definitive voice as a mainstream moviemaker. Jagame Thandhiram has all the trademarks of a “Karthik Subbarbaj Padam” like the use of diegetic soundtracks from popular Tamil movies , a flawed central hero on the lookout for redemption , callbacks to yesteryear classic films of Rajinikanth and the overflow of dead pan dark humour yet somehow the film feels a lot less like a traditional Subbaraj outing which is a strange contradiction in itself.

Unlike his earlier works the central conceit of placing a sensitive topic like emigration crisis inside a done to death gangster covering lends a lot of tonal imbalances to the usual style that we have come to associate with Subbaraj movies. The treatment wants it to be a suave gangster flick inspired by western counterparts whereas the writing is muddled and unwinds into a hollow abyss that the performances keep afloat at times.

Suruli is a Chennai based local thug who is guided more by impulse than reason in his decision and we get this facet of his character early on when he is introduced. The scene has a soon to be married hero waiting  to murder a guy stopping a moving train in the middle of nowhere just to prove a point to his longtime nemesis. The sequence is so Tarantino-ishqe in the sense that the we get gangsters going on about a cheeky wordplay about post marital sex just before emptying a loaded pistol on their target. However, Surullii’s abandoned by his soon bride to be after learning about his way of life.  A down and out Suruli is lured into an irresistible offer by one of his former friends working in UK to solve a long-time standing gang war. The gang heads are the aging mob boss Peter Sprott (James Cosmo) and an immigrant turned crime lord Shivadoss (Joju George) and we get the usual expositional montages detailing their far reaching business and shoddy dealings. Surulli is hired to be the Tamil speaking rat for Peter’s team and help them undermine Shivadoss gang’s presence in the local and international smuggling market.

Suruli’s ambitions land him in a tight spot after he falls in love with a widowed club singer Attila (Aishwarya Lekshmi ) and is caught between Peter’s racist surge against emigrant population and attempts to disarm Shivadoss  and his gang. Dhanush plays Suruli with his usual charm and it’s the performance that holds the superficially written inner turmoil of the hero when his moral compass is tested later on with a series of revelations that has got to do with the emigrants and atrocities endured by the homeless community. The story tries to weave in the Eelam issue and draws parallels to the inhuman plight of the homeless in the battle for their survival on a constant basis against a system that wants to name call them terrorists and castrate them with legislations. Subbaraj does not want to delve too deep into the cause that pushed Peter to do the evil that he does but underlines his inherent racism through dialogues by supporting players so the villain pretty much turns into a one dimensional bad guy with little or no character nuances. That being said James Cosmo owns the little quirks and offers gravitas to the part.

Jagame Thandhiram is a mix bag as there is no doubt in the sincerity of the writing towards the refugee cause which sets it apart from the often loud, lip service to bang the viewer with the gravity of the social issue being presented treatment that movies adopt. The narrative does not use cheap shots to get sympathy but often merges real images and archived footage to good effect to show the lasting trauma faced by survivors of organized alienation sponsored by the governments branding them as deranged and in the process locking them up for eternity. This might very well be the route that Karthik Subbaraj takes from now as a jumping point for his big ticket films and we might get better horned , smoother on the edges narratives revolving around real issues with the occasional fluff in its core that can be overseen in the grander scheme of things.