Review: Suriya Rises Above Kanguva

Kanguva is a mishmash of conceptually strong set pieces that feels bloated, as the central scaffolding holding together the core themes of love that heals over time and eternity, feels like an afterthought, observes Arjun Menon.

Calling Kanguva crass or campy is beside the point, owing somewhat to the sweeping scope and ambition of Siva's extravagant myth-making.

But the film hits you over the head from the get-go, clattering and screeching along, with its borderline 'assaultive', clunky world-building.

It's rare to see a film of this magnitude, where the majesty of the ideas on screen is trumped by a jaded execution.

Siva is a capable image maker, who has an eye for layered compositions and staging choices that work when pitched at a certain velocity. But the catch lies in the B-movie adjacent aesthetics of his overall cinematic project, where blunt force is mistaken for sincerity which hampers some of his better instincts as a film-maker.

Kanguva is interesting whenever Siva focuses the story on the warrior prince Kanguva (Suriya) from a past timeline, whose life is mysteriously intertwined with that of a conniving bounty hunter Francis (Suriya again). Francis' bumbling rivalry and 'on-off' romance with fellow bounty hunter Angelina (Disha Patani) forms some of the most tiring aspects of the first half.

Francis' carefree, exuberant existence is hampered after the arrival of an odd, muted kid, who seems to have an inexplicable connection with both these men, separated by centuries.

The corny-by-design setting is fodder enough for ample juicy melodrama, where the time-jumping shenanigans can lead to some swashbuckling adventure.

While watching Kanguva, I couldn't stop thinking of S S Rajamouli's sprawling epic Magadheera (2009), a film about two lovers fated to romance separated by centuries.

Though Kanguva is doing a contrived, watered-down version of the 'promise that transcends' time gimmick, it has none of the chirpiness or outsized imagination of the Rajamouli outing.

The film takes the 'promise' angle and runs with it, to little effectiveness.

When a series of events leads to the kid being abducted in Francis' timeline, you can feel the non-existent structure of the screenplay revealing itself.

The first half is spent setting up the older timeline and building the clan histories, inter-tribe wars and the Spanish expeditions and betrayals.

The film has a stop-gap effect at this point and never jumps back till the latter part of the second half. This is a storytelling choice borne out of a narrative shortcut strategy, further calling out the perfunctory nature of the present-day timeline and its sporadic scope in the bigger picture.

A promise made by a leader who alienates him from his people, a little boy despising a man despite his magnanimous sacrifice, a crew of women upending the conventions of a rogue encounter, a warrior prince who is forced to leave his own for his moral rigor, a hero whose presence is filtered through the minds of his clan through the air, water and fire that surrounds them and a fierce, the unexplained intertwining of fates that connect two people across centuries...

The list goes on if one starts to unpack the scope and potency of the ideas here but none of them shine through.

Kanguva is a mishmash of conceptually strong set pieces that feels bloated, as the central scaffolding holding together the core themes of love that heals over time and eternity, feels like an afterthought.

Suriya is effective in playing up the emotional bluntness and his earnestness is the only thing that somewhat anchors Kanguva from syncing into abysmal camp territory.

You see the conviction oozing through his body, and an actor committed to staying afloat a poorly conceived script that is beneath his pay grade and cinematic sensibilities.

Suriya punches, howls and screams his way through the conceptually potent yet underdeveloped scenarios with the iron-clad conviction of someone who has submitted to the creator and his material, with no qualms of holding back himself from looking unfettered on screen.

To his credit, he saves Kanguva from an ambitious slog to some extent though there is only so much he can do to salvage a self-imploding text. The much-rumoured cameo adds insult to injury and comes off pretty awkwardly at the end.

Suriya eats up Kanguva and leaves little scope for any other actor to count as registering worthwhile performances, a feature of the sketchy, caricaturish writing mostly.

Bobby Deol is wasted as the fierce, barbarian king Udhiran, who takes on Kanguva.

But the shoddy writing is bereft of any sense of interiority for the actor to settle down into the skin of the bloodthirsty maniac, who can pose any threat to Kanguva.

Disha Patani is asked to look good on screen and adequately goes through the motions.

Vetri Palanasamy might be the real winner here, as the ace cinematographer conjures up eerie-looking, atmospheric visual spectacle, and he can find interesting ways to demarcate the different tonal high jinx of the wavering script to some aesthetic consistency, with his colour palettes comprising of reds, greens and blues.

He gets to walk away with an impressive showreel that can speak by itself for his work.

It's ironic that Kanguva is a colossal step up for director Siva, in the sheer scope and magnitude of his vision and yet, the messy and unwieldy packaging calls out his shortcomings as a storyteller. Misplaced sincerity and an increasing dependence on primal emotional beats have become passé by way of his treatment of them.

No amount of scope can justify the visceral numbness and relentless 'attack on the senses' quality of this film.

Kanguva is at its best when it is a primal, resounding and unfiltered scream and not so good when it tries to be a sprawling, franchise trail run that does not come together as a whole.