Suriya is a household sweetheart who always enjoyed the fondness of Tamil women, irrespective of age; and that’s mostly because the women in his films are portrayed in a very dignified manner. But the first 30 minutes of Kanguva has Suriya, as Francis, doing all sorts of buffoonery that it makes him look like a 2019 TikToker – a tackily-dressed wannabe, editing himself into cringe and borderline pervetish situations with ‘The Boys’ music, or on a ‘Busted’ font.
Siva, too, all said and done about his people-pleasing women characters, has never sexualized his heroines and has also mentioned instances where he has rejected opportunities to have a skin-show for the women in his film. Him and Suriya, have decided to break their long streak of supporting empowerment, in Kanguva with Disha Patani – who is hyper sexualized as a glam doll. She comes in 1 song and in scenes totally lasting no more than 20 minutes. But you actually hope she doesn’t get any more screen time since her presence is loud, caricaturish, and tiresome.
This isn’t limited to Disha though, every single character – from Redin Kinsley, to Yogi Babu, to Kovai Sarala, to ‘Natty’ Nataraj to Bobby Deol, is inorganic and their drama-like dialogue delivery doesn’t help one bit. The inconsistent dialect, that starts off with ancient Tamil jargon and ends with a present-day news reader’s lingo, coupled with incoherent, dull and unimpressive dialogues by Madhan Karky really takes away the period vibe from this ‘historic film’. The art work by Late Mr.Milan, however is really commendable with its large ships, archaic weapons, and plausible topography – that, along with costume designing of tribal jewelry, make up for the world building that the director failed to do. But to what extent?
Numerous main characters die in the film, some even die brutal deaths like the sati-esque suicide of a wife, or of tribal lords losing hands or a son killing himself, some cameos may even sound exciting on paper, but none of it evokes any kind of emotion within you because it fails to translate on screen .Pair it up with Devi Sri Prasad’s deafening, and piercing background score, that we would not recommend listening to without noise-canceling earphones or songs that are very easily forgettable, it will be the 13th reason in Kanguva that would induce a headache in a viewer.
It is as though Siva wrote a few scenes on different sheets of paper and then compiled them in random, haphazard manner because nothing else would explain the rocky, uninteresting and bizzare non-linear screenplay of Kanguva.
1/5 stars
