With a stereotypically tragic backstory, extreme violence, and an utterly unconvincing hero, the film would have perhaps worked better if marketed as a parody.
Close to three hours of every formulaic Kollywood trope later, Rudhran is an agonising watch. Raghava Lawrence as the hero Rudhran, has a tragic backstory that sets him on the path of vengeance. Bodies drop to a headache-inducing soundtrack. Villainous henchmen are constantly airborne in defiance of the laws of gravity and good cinema. There’s always an accommodating breeze to dramatically ruffle Rudhran’s hair each time he slaughters someone. There is a smattering of bad jokes that leave you feeling secondhand embarrassment for the actors. And if all this wasn’t enough, the hero comes up with punchlines entirely in alliteration. Here’s a sample: “Ayyanara paarthirkiya da? Ayyadhaanda ayyanaaru!”
Please imagine the above dialogue shrieked at you from a towering screen while the music works itself up into a delirious frenzy. Rudhran ultimately delivers his notion of justice as an incarnate of Siva, at a Bhairava temple, with devotees dancing in the throes of religious fervour. Also, Rudhran is high throughout this sequence, hallucinating his dead family egging him into battle. What people want to smoke should be up to them, but I’m confused about what the messaging here is.
In this exceedingly convoluted, messy film, the message is either–since Tamil movies however bad will still give you a sermon from the hero–don’t go abroad for work without your family because tragedy will strike if you do. Or, it is that men must take on the avatharam of whatever god they’re named after to bring down criminal empires by solely violent means. It’s hard to tell which it is, the plot is quite muddled.
Sarathkumar seems to be settling comfortably into playing the bad guy. After his toxic rich father character in Vijay’s Varisu, he’s the main antagonist in Rudhran. To be precise, he’s an antagonist whose crime network is explained away vaguely with even foggier reasons for how Rudhran and his family became entrapped in it.
We’re introduced to Rudhran’s family only in flashbacks. The real tragedy in the backstory is the wasted talent of Nassar and Kaali Venkat. Nassar plays Rudhran’s two-dimensional father and Kaali is a friend and side-kick to a hero who is not even half as capable an actor as he is. Ragavan Lawrence glowers at villains, and murders without consequence, and offers poorly executed comic scenes when not delivering punch dialogues in alliteration. This might describe most Kollywood heroes, but the distinction is that he does none of it well. Raghavan Lawrence manages neither to amuse nor intimidate anyone as Rudhran. His scenes and line deliveries are so unremarkable that the film would have done better marketed as a parody.
Even Sarath Kumar has only as much menace as an evil monster from a children’s fairytale, despite being one of the most seasoned actors in the cast. Priya Bhavani Shankar as Rudhran’s wife Ananya is present for as long as she can contribute to the tragedy in her husband’s past. Until then she’s the ideal wife, completely absorbed in the needs of her mother-in-law and spouse.
What is it with Kollywood heroes, murdered wives, and righteous male rage? When will the industry let women characters be more than doting wives and daughters-in-law before being violently killed off all so that the hero can have a sad story to tell?
We’ll probably never get an answer to that, but to the question of whether you should watch Rudhran over this long weekend, I would say absolutely not.
Source: The News Minute