Kanguva Review | Nobody Emerges a Winner in This Big Bland Screaming Competition

When Kanguva was announced as this Pan-Indian film by director Siva, it had a very mixed reaction since Siva was known for creating a certain style of gallery-pleasing entertainers that sort of over-emphasize emotions. His movies are basically an overdose of Paasam, and even the ones that have worked at the box office were largely saved by the heroics rather than the writing’s quality. When it comes to Kanguva, his first collaboration with actor Suriya, the filmmaking sensibilities on a writing level have the same broad strokes we have seen in his previous films. The only difference is that the setting and scale are much higher this time.

So, as many of you may know, the story here shuttles between 2024 and 1070. In 2024, we have this bounty hunter named Francis Theodore, who helps the police find criminals who aren’t easy to catch. His ex-girlfriend Angelina is like a rival of him in this business. At one point, during a mission to catch a criminal, Francis happens to meet a young boy with whom he senses a connection. What is it and how is it connected to the 1070 story is what we see in Kanguva.

Siva has always said that he loves to explore human emotions in his story. Well, the problem is that his exploration of emotions is always exaggerated. We have the classic example of his last film, Annathe, which was the annoying peak of Annan Thankachi Paasam. Kanguva might feel like this war film from the outside. But at its core, it is a Siva film with the typical loud presentation. The entire first half an hour of this film, which has the 2024 events, feels like a slog with songs and forced humor just to show Suriya as this cool hero with flashy outfits and dashing hairstyles. Then, the movie goes into the main story, which has the generic beats of a revenge story. The drama in the story is pretty thin, and Siva is trying to patch it up by giving us back-to-back fight sequences.

From the trailer and whatever promo materials are out there, it is quite evident that the movie aspires to be this out-and-out adventure action film. Unfortunately, none of the action set pieces was able to create an impression as most of them, with their frequent cuts, sloppy graphics, and excessive duration, started to feel exhausting. Siva is trying to be innovative with his writing by creating that sequence where Kanga/ Kanguva literally fights an entire army single-handedly, similar to the “angry birds” bombing we saw in Baahubali. But by the time the movie reaches that space, we are exhausted, and hence nothing really works.

The emotional angle is at times breaching the cringe levels, and there is this one scene where the boy Kanguva protects, who had lost his family, cries out loud seeing a bird family in the nest. The whole audience with whom I saw the movie expressed their disagreement with that scene with a unanimous “uff.” The women-empowering fight sequences also looked very cheesy on screen. The fight sequences don’t have that creative high. The visual effects are impressive in terms of setting the backdrop, but it is flawed when it comes to some of those green screenshots. Considering the overall loudness of the movie, I would say DSP’s music was in sync with the director’s vision. In the final 30 minutes of the movie, where it shifts between the present and past, I found myself looking at the watch multiple times, as nothing unpredictable was happening, and Siva was basically torturing physics with his imagination. The 3D stereoscopy they have done is really great, and that was perhaps the only takeaway from this movie.

From an acting point of view, the movie offers Suriya a chance to portray a wide variety of emotions and characteristics. But the meter is always high, and since the script is less concerned about having nuances, the performance again gets reduced, and the claps he is getting are mainly for the biceps and posture. Bobby Deol, who is projected as the main antagonist of this movie, has only one thing to do, which is to growl with just one intense look. Disha Patani, as Angelina, is there only to be a thirst trap. Barring the cameo that comes at the very end, people who have been following the updates know who that could be, every other character in the movie is lost in the crowd.

The movie was literally so loud that when the interval happened, the entire audience was admiring the beauty of silence. The drama was so filmy that when a crucial character in the story died in the final act of the film, a section of the audience sort of clapped, and the rest of the audience didn’t find it insensitive. The ongoing trend of making a second part to any big-budget film is there in the case of Kanguva. Well, if the makers are going ahead with this kind of storytelling, that movie is going to be dead on arrival.