Movie: Jagame Thanthiram
Langauege : Tamil
OTT: Netflix
My View:
I personally think the style of Al Pacino, Robert De Niro & Quentin Tarantino, which Karthik Subaraj(KS) likes, made him to do lots of inspiring scenes. The movie needed some time initially, as they need to establish the base, but felt the screenplay because of this was like bits and pieces initially. Could have done a better job. KS did say that his one liner of Mix of Foreign + Indian gangster, about this movie. He initially planned this in NY and also I guess he approached Al Pacino.
Gotto admit the fact that Karthik Subaraj did a good job to not dub the English dialogues, and as I could see the actual raw conversation. But at the same time this also would have an impact on commercial impact ( probably since Netflix, he went with this). This is definitely not the best of KS and not cult, and KS should have carried over his own style over inspiring his favorite stars. One liner is really good and I felt could have been dealt much better. I used to imagine when I watch some English thrillers, what would be if we need to have an Indian hero here and KS brought in a good visualizing and even maintained the authenticity of Football reference. Should give kudos to him. At the same time, KS has set a good profile for himself, the expectations were carrying in high of this genre.
The mid and post mid portion of the movie I felt really good and it worked for me. Kind of interesting sequence between Shivdoss and Peter. The emotional connect of what happened to Tamils in Sri Lanka was explained very well and kudos for good acting. They touched the key point on what India failed to do, which various European and other countries like Australia, NZ took, by welcoming in Tamils form Sri Lanka during war and gave them status. Many Indian & TN politician played politics all the time and made use of the situation for vote bank, and did not do enough.
I think the story's thought process is complex and challenging. Presenting the blend of 3 Key issues under 3 hours i.e, Gang War, Immigrant Issue, SL Tamil issue is definitely tough and I feel though we can appreciate KS for a try, but I doubt if he has executed extremely well. It's not bad and definitely somewhere just on par.I really wanted to KS to make a full fledge movies/series on SL Tamils and use this medium to educate and understand the struggle they went through.
Summarizing it, many dialogues were really good, especially from the "Murugesan" who acted as a dishwasher and thought process of the story is good, but felt could have had a better execution, to fall into cult category. The finishing touch on giving water is brilliant and so does the camera circling up two persons on 2 incidents, is a symbolic representation shift in things is about to happen. Those were few of the very good KS's touch. I liked it and felt could have been better with much more engaging factor and will go with 80/100
