Vishal in a nonetheless from ‘Magudam’
| Picture Credit score: Vishal Movie Manufacturing facility
After the success of his 2023 actioner, Mark Antony, actor Vishal will need to have sat and imagined a follow-up masala movie that may finest the Adhik Ravichandran directorial. I say this with confidence as a result of his newest movie, Magudam(which additionally marks the actor’s directorial debut), is a textbook instance of what may go improper if you attempt to ape a successful formulation. Having picked a narrative written by director Ravi Arasu (who was initially directing the movie earlier than it modified), the producer Vishal appears to have motivated the aspiring writer-director Vishal to make sure that a guidelines of tropes that labored within the latest previous is within the movie.
The daddy-son double motion in Mark Antony? Take it, and retain these vibrant costumes and a few quirks. Is seaport smuggling concerned? Okay, however too many such movies about drug and ammunition smuggling have come out. Change it to duplicate car components that trigger many deadly accidents — we additionally get one thing resembling a message. Now, add some token fem-rage for good measure; one thing for household audiences, proper? Give the daddy character a Robin Hood-esque gangster flashback. Let the son have a Thevar Magan-esque arc. Voila! You might have Magudam (which means ‘crown’ in Tamil). Oh wait, why depart Ilaiyaraaja? Let’s use his songs randomly to develop into the one-millionth Tamil movie in latest instances to nostalgia-bait. In case you haven’t caught the drift but, this three-hour-long gangster saga is a very contrived and amateurish actioner.
Vishal in a nonetheless from ‘Magudam’
| Picture Credit score:
Vishal Movie Manufacturing facility
Even in the event you had been to chop some slack for this being a debutant director’s movie, you’ll count on an skilled actor like Vishal to grasp the viewers’s pulse or at the least concentrate on trite concepts that Tamil cinema has lengthy deserted. Can we nonetheless assume a shot of a girl belting a meal is humorous? That is the one attribute that Dushara Vijayan’s character, Jamuna, will get; each time she eats, her husband, Vishal’s Kirubakaran, goes, ‘Indha mukku mukkuraale,’ and we’re anticipated to giggle. Thambi Ramaiah’s presence evokes Vishal to write down lame Tamil puns like ‘Oil – aayul,’ ‘quantity – numbrathu,’ or ‘emathuradhu – yen maathuradhu’, and it will get tiring shortly.
Magudam (Tamil)
Director: Vishal
Solid: Vishal, Dushara Vijayan, Anjali, John Vijay
Runtime: 185 minutes
Storyline: A middle-class medical consultant’s life takes a violent flip when a private tragedy attracts him into the shadowy legacy of his estranged gangster father.
Magudam can also be one of many worst-edited movies in latest instances — one thing you wouldn’t count on from NB Srikanth. After a tiring day as a medical rep, Kirubakaran comes house to his offended spouse. We get particular person pictures of him switching off his bike, eradicating his sneakers, adjusting his tie, washing his arms, and settling to eat. In a unique movie, you would possibly mistake this as an intentional and sensible depiction of one of the satisfying moments of a hard-working middle-class man’s day; however Magudam was by no means meant to be that movie. The truth is, you surprise why, for over 40 unnecessarily stretched-out minutes, we comply with the tough realities of a middle-class man’s dream to purchase a automotive, just for it to go completely nowhere. One imagines this might need to do with that complete ‘message’ on the climax about unlawful imports of car components, however the two-and-a-half-hour-long gangster plot between these two concepts begs to vary.
The story is actually an indication of the notorious dead-wife trope — we see Kiruba undergo a tragedy that unleashes his interior beast, after which we get a flashback about how Kiruba’s father, Linga, grew to become a dreadful don controlling the Visakhapatnam port. It doesn’t take a lot to guess that Anjali, who performs Kiruba’s mom and Linga’s spouse, Annapoorani, dies within the flashback, however how this transpires is one other mind-numbing affair.
It is a movie with horrible scene staging. What was the entire level of prolonging Linga’s face reveal in a scene that runs for therefore lengthy? We get it — Vishal sports activities a brand new look — now can we please transfer on?
Within the second half, Vishal makes an attempt to carry some emotional gravitas through the use of a tape recorder as a Macguffin. Sadly, even that turns into ineffective since you by no means perceive why Linga chooses to distance himself from his son. Not one of the villains appears like an actual menace, and after some extent, nothing is smart anymore. A climax with loads of shouting, weapons, katanas, daggers, and cringeworthy dialogues seals the deal and locations the magudam on Magudam as one of the tedious masala movies of the yr.
Over three lengthy hours, Magudam manages to do one thing many dangerous movies couldn’t: make film-watching really feel like a punishment.
Magudam is presently operating in theatres
Revealed – August 14, 2026 11:30 pm IST
