Suriya's Kanguva Is A Flaming Mess

If you thought <em>Indian 2</em> was cringe, wait till you witness the first 40 minutes of <em>Kanguva</em>.

Aditya+Shrikrishna

Nov 14, 2024

Poster detail. Kanguva

DIRECTOR SIVA’s Kanguva is a flaming mess. The “pan-India” bug is upon actor Suriya, the film’s producers and Siva, and they don’t have a clear strategy to achieve it. There are no ideas here, just loglines. There is no writing here, just random deaths and fight sequences. There is no story here, just events. This is taking “event film” much too literally. Even if you are ready to forgive all that, there is no actual filmmaking here; just a bunch of shots strung together with no coherence or cohesion. During the film’s promotions, much was made of the makers’ respect for SS Rajamouli. After all, he is the progenitor of this pan-India bug that spares none. But no one in the Kanguva camp stopped for a minute, sat down and thought hard about what makes Rajamouli. What makes his cinema, cinema. Kanguva is not cinema.

The story doesn’t need the back of the envelope. Maybe a palm would suffice. There is a present-day portion set in Goa as well as an undisclosed location that forms a Russian research base. The connection to Russia doesn’t come up after the initial scroll text. They are researching some nonsense cocktail of brain and neural networks on children, one of whom escapes. We meet Francis (Suriya), a bounty hunter who teams up with his partner played by Yogi Babu to catch criminals for the police. His competition is his ex-girlfriend Angela (Disha Patani). Her Yogi Babu counterpart is Redin Kingsley. If you thought Indian 2 was cringe, wait till you witness the first 40 minutes of Kanguva. These portions test our patience, there isn’t an ounce of willingness to try here, the team takes the audience for granted and simply strings together one embarrassing sequence after another until the escaped boy meets Francis.

We also travel back in time, several centuries ago, to an archipelago of five islands. The names don’t matter — they are united by language but comprise different races living with different cultures in different weather and terrestrial conditions. Here too there is white man’s interference — the Romans want to conquer these islands. But like with the Russians, Siva ignores them too along the way. Kanguva (Suriya) is the crown prince of one of the islands, Perumaachi, and they are known for warfare. Arathi, an island bathed in red, is ruled by Udhiran (Bobby Deol) who wages war against Perumaachi.

Does that make for a film with pan-India appeal? Siva thinks so. He doesn’t bother filming a scene for more than 10-20 seconds. The editing pattern of this film must be studied to demonstrate how not to make a film. No shot lasts long enough for the film, the characters and the audience to breathe, and this is clearly a sign that the director has nothing to offer. For a scene to breathe, there must be details. What will the characters say? Siva has nada. There needs to be world building. Siva comes up with zilch here. What will the narrator or the film itself say? Siva has nothing on paper, so he resorts to breakneck action that is not even imaginative. The characters yell their lines and there is mindless violence that is not even choreographed. It is not just the special effects that are mediocre, even something as perfunctory as dubbing is a mess. They seem to have shot the scenes and dubbed different lines over them. This is lazy if not downright unprofessional.

The present-day portion tells us nothing about Francis and how he does his job. They could have inserted some neat action sequences here; instead they resort to an unfunny ambush. KS Ravikumar plays a deeply unserious cop. This is a major problem with the film: it wants to be light but also be taken seriously. Things don’t work that way. What is the pair of Ravi Raghavendra and Kovai Sarala doing? Who are they? Parents, yes, but why are they even there? Kanguva delivers a big speech about how there is no forgiveness for treason, but this is not consistent with what happens later with the character. A young kid who gains his confidence tries to kill him and Kanguva wants some time to save his clan and then offer his life to the boy. What happened to the savage hero we were introduced to?

That’s another thing about Kanguva. The savagery and the butchery. It is as if a certain kind of tribalism is exoticised here. In a year we saw Pa Ranjith make a film about the historicity of a tribe with the kind of dignity that was denied them over centuries, we get a film from Siva where the tribalism is passed through a prism of all its stereotypes. The women in these islands uniformly look fair while the men come in darker shades. Who knew! And the women remain submissive to an army from Arathi until Kanguva communicates from afar that they must fight. Some great sorcery that they had cellular communication back then. If they are trained — as the subsequent montage shows — why didn’t they fight straightaway? Why did they need Kanguva’s blessings?

As is routine with these big films now, Kanguva doesn’t end. It introduces new negative characters when it didn’t even bother giving a proper showdown between the hero and the villain here. For all the baying for blood, Bobby Deol goes out with a whimper. Watching Kanguva reminds us of one of Logan Roy’s admonishments. It is what we want to say to the makers after watching: “You are not serious people.”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of OTTplay. The author is solely responsible for any claims arising out of the content of this column.