Over the last couple of decades, various movie industries in India have seen numerous iterations of the classic “A History of Violence” template, where the seemingly simple hero is not an ordinary person and has a glorious past. Since we have seen many such films featuring major superstars from all industries, I wouldn’t really blame RS Durai Senthilkumar’s first collaboration with Legend Saravanan for lacking novelty. However, the way the writing of this movie creates twists in the tale just by throwing in outlandish stuff makes it a hilariously bad movie. Clocking at 136 minutes, Leader from RS Durai Senthilkumar never really becomes unengaging. However, that is not because of the movie’s quality. It is mostly because of the frequency at which illogical mass moments are getting bombarded in this unofficial entry to the Tamizh Padam franchise. If you see anyone coming out of the theater with a happy face after this movie, he or she is definitely a roast channel owner.
Sakthivel, our hero, is this mechanic in Thoothukudi who lives with his daughter in a rented house. Sakthivel’s wife passed away long ago, and his daughter has a hearing disability. What we see here are the events that unfold in the life of Sakthivel when his daughter is dragged into some troubles due to certain illegal activities happening in the Thoothukudi port.
RS Durai Senthilkumar’s filmography is an inconsistent one. He has made a very thrilling and dramatic Kodi, and he has followed it up with a tacky film like Pattas. So when it was announced that Legend Saravanan was teaming up with him, I was expecting at least the idea to be interesting. SPOILERS AHEAD! The idea here is very similar to Joshiy’s Salaam Kashmir, and Sakthivel is Major Sreekumar. I am revealing this “twist” in the tale because in the movie, it is something we can clearly see from a mile away. After this so-called big reveal at the interval point, the movie tries to celebrate something the hero doesn’t have: swagger. And to make things interesting and complicated, RS Durai Senthilkumar has included character outbursts, wild master plans of the hero, and even set pieces that include violence somewhat similar to what we have seen in the Hindi movie Kill. But with a hero whose expression range is equivalent to a mannequin, all these elements never become entertaining in the intended way.
If you are someone who adores commercial cinema, when you hear a Thaman BGM, a fantasy of you being a hero in commercial over-the-top movie might happen in your head. The movie Leader is basically a man who can fund those dreams, hiring the best people to make it happen. However, the problem is that the script is under developed. It almost feels like Saravanan listed out his favorite movie moments to RS Durai Senthilkumar, and the director decided to ignore logic and connect all these scenes in the most stupid manner possible. In the movie, our hero has a past where he is the leader of India’s sharpest 12 fighters/soldiers. But when you see their analysis skills in tough operations like extracting students from foreign countries, you might feel like pressing sedition charges against the film for making our best men behave like stupid people.
The very first action block in the movie, which features a lot of chasing involving SUVs and trucks gets an explanation at a later stage, and the planning is so complicated that even Christopher Nolan would want to pause and rewind to understand the setup. RS Durai Senthilkumar is trying to acknowledge the fact that the movie will have cringeworthy elements through that first father-daughter episode. Unfortunately, what he has shown in the movie is not even cringeworthy. At one point, the hero and his partner, who are both secret agents working for India, take the heroine’s mother to a shootout to show her what their work looks like. It was almost like seeing Urvashi from Madhuchandralekha or Kalpana from Bangalore Days in a movie like Dhurandhar, and Ranveer Singh takes them to these shootout locations to show how difficult being a spy is. After writing such stupid scenes, we are asked to feel bad for this character who had to spent six years in Jail and did a lot of things for his daughter and the country.
Unlike his debut film Legend, here Saravan is spotted with a beard, and the skin complexion is somewhat realistic. The cosmetic downgrade might actually make you believe that his acting has improved significantly. I don’t know whether he has any issues with neck muscles, because in most places his whole upper body moves. Even in the most stormy situations, his hair and makeup are intact. Shaam plays the role of a police officer who earlier served in the military and joined the police force later, as everyone in his family was in the police. This whole history of this character is for a lame payoff in the climax. Andrea Jeremiah gets to play this overenthusiastic police officer, whom we forget after a while. If you look at the expressions of both Shaam and Andrea in their combination scenes with Saravanan, they are actually struggling to hide their disappointment. Santhosh Prathap plays that typical psychopathic villain in fancy clothes. Lal gets to play this character whose decision to hide certain things makes him the real psychopath in this story. Prabhakar as Salt repeats the same performance under a different character. Payal Rajput plays the female lead.
Legend Saravanan’s character in this movie is a man of many talents. He is a mechanic, he is part of a special force for India, he has created an AI version of his late wife so that his daughter can talk to her, and the list of his talents is endless. There is a scene where the hero asks the students to go to the library during a shootout in a college. And the reason he gives is, something like, a book is the strongest weapon. I mean, this might well be a dream character for him. Unfortunately, the imagination drenched in cliches is giving a borderline nightmare for the viewers. The movie ends with a statement that this is only the beginning, and then we see a silhouette shot of the real mastermind behind all this. Unlike other big movies, where we can be confident that such second parts won’t happen, the low benchmark of the Saravanan movies will give you a feeling that this particular sequel will materialize, as there are a few more heroism tropes Saravanan might want to show on screen.
