The introduction scene of the hero in the movie Agilan has him smuggling three containers with fake currency into a cargo ship. And you know what was painted on those containers? “FA-KE” along with serial numbers. I do appreciate fewer complexities in over-the-top action films, for sure. But this almost felt like an insult. N Kalyanakrishnan’s Agilan invests so much in certain moments that you get a feeling that the director wants to convey something only he knows.
Agilan, a crane operator in a harbor in Chennai, and one of the close aid of this dock boss, Paranthaman, is our central character. He is a very ambitious guy, and his ambitions have only helped him create enemies on both sides of the smuggling business. The movie here shows us how Agilan completes a task given to him by Kapoor, a guy who runs all the dirty sea-route businesses, to get the title of “the King of the Indian Ocean.”
The whole Agilan worshipping and how they clubbed it with the Tamil sentiment somewhere reminded me of Hari’s Singam 3, where Suriya was called the “Indian Police” and was acknowledged by the police from various other countries. The poor level of conviction that was there in that movie is clearly there in Agilan, which makes it a tiring and unintentionally funny film. The first half is so focused on making Agilan some kind of an Anti-Hero that Kalyanakrishnan’s wild imagination goes on and on without limits. Seeing the interval block, I was like, “Okay. What’s the conflict?”
In the second half, everything goes old school, and Agilan explains his past. And it becomes your cliched Tamil action film where the hero gives you a speech about rising prices of essential materials, how mafias control it, etc. The back and forth in the second half is so much that you just lose track of what the movie was trying to say. You have Agilan’s father’s story, then you have Agilan dealing with some backstabbers. There is even a moment where Agilan gets shot by his enemies and is put in the ocean. But a few minutes later, he returned with an arm sling pouch on a boat. The way Kalyanakrishnan tosses logic in this film is very atrocious. I want to know how he convinced Jayam Ravi to go ahead with this concept, which practically looks like a 2-hour long setup to crack one mass-euphoric scene. It seems like every director nowadays is asking Sam CS to give something similar to Vikram Vedha, and it’s becoming repetitive.
Jayam Ravi, in his typical style, tries his best to make Agilan and Nandha genuine characters. But with a shoddy script like this that just doesn’t want to look coherent, Ravi’s efforts are never enough to make us forget about the outlandishness of the writing. Priya Bhavani Shankar, as Inspector Madhavi, is a pointless character. Thankfully, there are no songs of this pair in this movie. Chirag Jani, as Inspector Gokul, is smoldering from beginning to end. Hareesh Peradi, Harish Uthaman, and Tarun Arora play these animated caricature-like bad guys.
Having a very ambitious and bizarre thought about the marine gangster world is definitely not a crime. But if you don’t have clarity on what you wish to say and if your making lacks conviction, then making an audience sit through something like that feels pretty much like abuse on a psychological level.
If you don't have clarity on what you wish to say and if your making lacks conviction, then making an audience sit through something like that feels pretty much like abuse on a psychological level.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
