Vishwanath & Sons

Indian male superstars have a difficult time from their 40s onwards. From soft romances and emotional dramas in their youth, they graduate to violent action films, with VFX often taking care of their once-famous physiques. These trends originate from society’s age-old belief that one is supposed to behave a certain way after a certain age. For sure, things are changing, which is why rare attempts like Vishwanath & Sons, with a major star like Suriya looking and playing his age, are welcome. Is Venky Atluri’s film the game-changer we need in 2026?

What you’re likely to feel about Venky Atluri and Suriya’s Vishwanath & Sons will largely depend on how you feel about Mamitha Baiju’s performance in it. She plays Maddy, a surrogate mother who enters the life of Vishwanath’s titular son when he’s emotionally blackmailed into finding an heir to his $5.4 billion fortune. Atluri could have used several descriptors to explain Maddy’s character to Mamitha Baiju, but there’s no denying the hangover of a thousand loosu ponnus of Tamil cinema who had to walk, just so Mamitha could run.

hings happen in Vishwanath & Sons. Lots of things, in fact, but you never learn about their weight. A young woman subjects her body to pregnancy just so she can fund her education. Later, almost on a whim, she decides to give up this hard-earned education. Meanwhile, a man who seems perfectly content being single is rather quickly persuaded to get himself a child. These are momentous choices with profound ramifications, and yet, we are never truly allowed to understand their emotional significance, the marks they leave on the interior lives of these characters.

Vishwanath & Sons deals with a red-flag subject, fronted by a protagonist who is a walking, talking green flag. Sanjay Vishwanath (Suriya), a multi-millionaire businessman and Olympic-medal-winning shooter, credits his father for teaching him all those valuable lessons. He becomes a skilled shooter after his father buys him a toy gun and when Sanjay hits his first target, his dad is overjoyed and claps.

Legacy. Not everyone’s story becomes one for the history books. Not everyone’s actions become part of everyday conversations, right? But many a time, many sections of society reduce legacy to progeny, and this includes even the top 1% of the top 1%. What they leave behind matters as much as who they leave behind. The Vishwanaths are no different. When we first meet Sanjay Vishwanath (Suriya, turning back the clock), the protagonist of Venky Atluri’s Vishwanath and Sons, he has just won an Olympic gold medal for the country. He is a super-successful businessman who does god-knows-what, earns god-knows-how-much money, and lives in a god-knows-how-palatial bungalow. And yet, the needs in the Vishwanath household are simple: Sanjay’s long-pending marriage. His mother Nirmala Devi (A show-stealing Radikaa Sarathkumar) is worried about her 42-year-old son, who is well past the ‘marriageable’ age. While he does look a million bucks, there’s a very good reason why he has been evading marriage. But when the legacy of the Vishwanaths comes up again, Sanjay, a doting son, relents to his mother’s wish that he start a family. He finds a surrogate mother, gets himself a son, and bam! Legacy levels completed. But when the baby falls sick, the surrogate mother, Maddy (A terrific Mamitha Baiju) enters their lives, and bam! Everyone’s world turns upside down.

Imagine having everything in abundance, yet your traumas remain unhealed. You’ve grown up shoving them away, comfortable enough now to just react to the triggers. And then someone walks in and heals your trauma without even trying. Sounds like a fantasy, doesn’t it? But not for director Venky Atluri – this is the core of Suriya-starrer Vishwanath and Sons. Sanjay Vishwanath (Suriya) is a successful businessman and Olympic medal winner in pistol shooting. His mother, Nirmala Devi (Radhikaa Sarathkumar), lives the way every 60-or 70-year-old does – always nagging her 40-year-old son to get married. She fails every time; Sanjay is clear that he doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage and feels complete by himself.