Veeran Review | A Sparkless Superhero Movie With Unimaginative Writing

Veeran, the new Tamil superhero movie directed by Maragadha Naanayam fame ARK Saravan, is a highly generic superhero film that is a bit clueless about developing this idea with budget constraints. Minnal Murali, which also had a similar superhero, was fun to watch mainly because it blended the concept with the cultural setting. Here, it’s like a typical hero-centric film that prefers a superhero over a hero who defies physics.

Kumaran is our hero. In high school, he got struck by lightning and got hospitalized. The physical trauma he went through made his parents shift him to Singapore. Years later, in 2021, he sees this dream about something horrible happening to his native village. What we see in the film are the developments that occur in the village after Kumaran’s arrival.

If you remove the superhero element from the movie, it feels like a usual mass masala Tamil film. If you cast any other action hero in the lead role, the whole superhero thing will look like a misfit. The movie’s central conflict is around a powerline project by a private corporate company. When the project reached Kumaran’s village, it hit a roadblock as there was a Veera Temple. Our hero decides to protect that temple using the superpower he got from the childhood accident. It is the absence of craft that really disappoints you. The movie never pushes the envelope creatively to make us appreciate the imagination.

ARK Saravan seems to be in a hurry after a certain point. The way Kumaran escapes after a final fight, the way the antagonist gets killed, etc., feels very shabby on a writing level. In the second half of the movie, there are a lot of comedy sequences that are stretched far too much. And the sentiments in certain sequences made me wonder whether Satyajyothi films’ brief to Maragadha Naanayam director was to create a superhero movie for the B and C center movie audience. Even within its fantasy setup, some of the scenes don’t work logically, as we could clearly see an easy solution considering the hero’s power.

The limited range of expressions of Hiphop Tamizha Aadhi is a good thing as it considerably reduces the melodrama from many scenes. His grace as a superhero is just about okay, and you don’t really get that high seeing the fight sequences. In terms of the opportunity to display acting chops, I would say R Badree has got the best scenes in the movie. The main villain Vinay Rai seems like a last-minute addition due to his ongoing demand as the sexy antagonist in many South Indian languages. The role was written very poorly. Munishkanth and Kaali Venkat are supposed to be the comic reliefs. Sassi Selvaraj plays the part of the hero’s best friend. Athira Raj, as the female lead, has nothing to do except the usual drill.

There is no effort to merge the superhero concept with the Tamil culture in the movie to create some sort of novelty. Everything remains superficial, and the attempts to add depth to the story by having emotional side tracks or de-tours don’t really work as they follow it with a pointless and overstretched comedy sequence. Overall, Veeran is one movie you just sit through without any excitement.