Ashwath Marimuthu’s new film Dragon starts with a scene where the hero realizes that girls love bad boys over studious achievers. From that point onwards, Dragon has this attire of a celebration of rowdy attitude, and some of the things the hero does in the initial areas of the movie are like a comical version of Arjun Reddy. But in the last lap of this movie, the story takes a major leap, which sort of nullifies all those problematic celebrations we saw till that point. By exploiting Pradeep Ranganathan’s strengths in a packaged entertainer that even has a messaging tonality, Ashwath Marimuthu creates a film that is extremely smart.
D Raghavan is our hero who was a studious guy in his school, and he cleared his 12th with 96%. But realizing that this won’t help him in impressing girls, Raghavan switches to menace mode in his college life, and he even gets a girlfriend using that attitude. What we see in Dragon is the practical life difficulties faced by Raghavan when his college days were over.
We have seen several loser hero stories where they are bitching about the heroine for leaving them at their low and then showing attitude after achieving something. The way Ashwath shows the character transformation of Raghavan and what happens in his relationship, you would get a feeling that this is one more film that just wants to make a specific segment of the male audience scream inside the theater and help them put attitude story updates. But Ashwath switches gears to a different zone, and we see the growth of our hero using his talent. The generic and exaggerated style of the movie ends at the interval block when an unprecedented conflict that can shatter everything for Raghavan arises.
The fixing Raghavan had to do in the second half of this movie is what really makes it entertaining. The heroic bits we saw in the first half are getting scrutinized in the second half, and it was not done in an overtly verbal, preachy way. Ashwath uses the help of comedy in that phase to convey the message. The script is basically an entertainingly structured rectification process of our hero. Just when you think the film is going to focus solely on entertainment and leave the hero as a lucky guy, Ashwath unleashes the next step in the rectification package, and that’s the patch that really changes the movie. This short period of the hero acknowledging his fundamental flaw manages to put a smile on everyone’s phase, and when I backtracked the film, everything felt like a setup to reach this point.
With Love Today, Pradeep Ranganathan has established his own style of performing this nosy, loud, looser lover, and in this one also, we can see similar traits. The masculinity and vulnerability quotient are slightly high for this character, and in the middle portions, Ashwath utilizes Pradeep’s style of humor and swagger to keep the audience entertained. Anupama Parameshwaran plays one of the female leads in the movie, and it was a character that had multiple shades, and she performed both versions of that character neatly. Kayadu Lohar, the other female lead, gets a character that mostly demands looks, and she serves the purpose. Mysskin’s Principal character was really solid, and I really loved how he delivered his lines in the film. George Mariyan gets a memorable role as Raghavan’s father. Harshath Khan as Kutty Dragon was kind of annoying, and I think the script wanted him to be annoying. Gautham Menon, in his attempt to release Dhruvanatchathiram, has acted and danced in this movie.
Dragon is a cleverly written commercial entertainer film that uses the framework of a tried and tested formula to create a more elaborate and emotionally connecting story. The mass entertainer compromises are definitely there, but the movie offers equally funny bits to compensate for that. In a way, Dragon shows that you can make a commercial hero-worshipping entertainer film by keeping the main character a grounded guy with many flaws, which he doesn’t flaunt as his macho trait.
Dragon shows that you can make a commercial hero-worshipping entertainer film by keeping the main character a grounded guy with many flaws, which he doesn't flaunt as his macho trait.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
