Con City

Over the years, films centred on scams have found love among fans in Tamil cinema. From Sathuranga Vettai to Doctor to Lucky Baskhar to Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithaal, several such films have remained favourites with fans. This week, Arjun Das, Anna Ben, Yogi Babu and Vadivukkarasi are exploring this genre with director Harish Durairaj’s Con City. Did they succeed? Let’s find out! Saravanan (Arjun Das) and his wife, Mithra (Anna Ben), run a humble mess in Mangalore. They are the parents of a young, physically challenged Jeeva (Akilan) and live with Mithra’s brother, Jackie (Yogi Babu), and Janaki (Vadivukkarasi). We are shown that Saravanan and Mithra are not on talking terms, but they continue to co-parent their kid. One day, Jeeva goes missing from school, and a look at the CCTV video reveals a dark secret that unravels everyone’s backstory and how they found each other.

The best parts of Con City are when it tries, quite successfully, to be a found family film. It has a gentle pace and takes its time to introduce us to its lead characters and the complex manner which they come to meet one another. If Saravanan (Arjun Das) and Mithra (Anna Ben) are pushed into a life of crime as a result of their respective predicaments, the mother-son duo of Janaki (Vadivukarasi) and Jackie (Yogi Babu) are who they are simply because they want to get rich and make a movie. There’s no overt moralism in them and the fact that they all know this about themselves, makes them a family we feel like rooting for. More than their need to stick together to remain free, we feel that it’s this lack of morality that has somehow kept them together.