Avinash Ramachandran

In a country that is so diverse that there is a new language, a new cuisine, a new landscape, a new cultural ethos, and even a new set of rules and regulations every 100-200 kilometres, perspective is everything. That is why it feels futile to try to make sense of the things that are ‘different.’ Why not just embrace the vibrance of diversity without trying to burden it with the monotony of uniformity? When Lakshmipriya Devi’s Boong presents us with her view of Manipur, it doesn’t ask us to analyse the differences, but to appreciate the similarities. And the best way to do it is to tell a film through the eyes of a boy, who might be corrupted by the world around him, but he has the excuse of saying, “But I didn’t know better.”

Power. In this world, which is all about the ones on top governing the kinds of lives lived by the ones on the bottom, power is ultimate. Of course, there is the adage that ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ But when presented with the possibility of having absolute power, there are not many who would deny that opportunity. Shakthi Thirumagan is about a person who refuses to deny that opportunity. One which he carefully crafted over time, greased more than a few palms, did more than his fair share of nefarious activities, and gained the key to ultimate power: information. In many ways, Arun Prabu Purushothaman’s Shakthi Thirumagan is a film about how the biggest power in a democracy, even if it might seem increasingly futile in an intolerant world, is the right to ask the right questions to the right people at the right time to get the right kind of information.

It is a silent night, and something really huge is expected to unfold. The cops are ready, and a huge consignment of guns is being transported. A nefarious plan to make Tamil Nadu the ‘Gun Capital’ of India is underway. The top brass of the police have surrounded the trucks. But things go awry. The big dog among the cops, Officer Prem (an assured Biju Menon), has his binoculars trained on one man who is nonchalantly dismantling people in his way. His mere presence is unnerving, and everyone there knows that the fight would be one-sided. And nope, that is not the introduction of Sivakarthikeyan’s Raghu, but Vidyut Jammwal’s Virat, the primary antagonist of Madharaasi. In contrast, Raghu just walks into the frame, gearing up to drunkenly dance and sing to the crowd about his love failure. This is quite a ‘different’ start to a film, but one that is absolutely in tune with whatever follows in this mad ride that hopes you have faith in the filmmaker to steer things home safely, even if it hits a few roadblocks on the way. And for the man who made films like Dheena, Ramana, Ghajini, Thuppakki, and Kaththi, Madharaasi might just be a reminder that he still has it in him.

Mohanlal and Sathyan Anthikad have been defining the emotional core of the average Malayali for over four decades now. Despite technological advancements, the propensity for action extravaganzas in today’s times, and the seeming erosion of the audience’s attention span, Mohanlal and Sathyan reunite for a film that reminds us why these two were allowed to define emotions closest to our hearts. Anger, love, fear, guilt, regret, happiness, devastating sadness, and a smile that finds its way through it all…