Kabali: The angry old man

Kabali is a gangster film with a refreshing new take, but with all the elements that make it a trademark Rajinikanth movie

On the surface, Kabali is the comeback vehicle for the angry dark man of Tamil cinema. This movie is as close as Rajinikanth has come since the 1990s to reliving the persona that propelled him to superstardom.

The movie opens with the release from jail of Kabali, a don in Malaysia, after having served a 25-year sentence. His aim is to exact revenge for the murder of his pregnant wife. However, what he finds on arrival is a Tamil expat community in trouble. Its youth are dropping out in large numbers and joining drug peddling gangs or are addicted to hard drugs and wasting their lives.

It is refreshing to see Rajini play his age finally. The movie is a gangster film with a difference. In these times of global distress, it is heartening to see a mainstream movie that talks about the rights of labourers. Kabali is also peppered with revolutionary iconography. For example, Kabali runs a school for the underprivileged and those who are seeking to reform themselves from drug abuse, and in this school are portraits of Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela.

There is also reference to self-respect. Kabali becomes the leader of a group of Tamil labourers who are exploited by plantation owners, and helps them get pay equal to that of Chinese labourers. He then joins Tamil Nesan, played by Nasser, who is at the forefront of the Tamil labour movement in Malaysia. However, it is also a sign of these times that Tamil Nesan is the head of a gang and not of a union or a political party. Setting the movie in Malaysia also allows the writers to talk about Tamil unity and self-respect circumventing the problems of a divided society back home.

The principled Tamil Nesan is an obstacle to others in the gang, who want to get into the lucrative drugs trade. The antagonist in the piece is Tony Lee (Winston Chao), a ruthless gangster, who wants to rule over Malaysia's underworld and gets Tamil Nesan eliminated.

Kabali now moves in to fill the void. Once he becomes the leader, he insists on wearing suits, which he explains as being for the same reason as B R Ambedkar's choice of suits over Mahatma's Gandhi decision to dress like an ascetic. Lee then stages a bloody coup in which Kabali's wife is killed, and Kabali is put behind bars.

In the present, Kabali is released by the Malaysian police to put an end to Lee's gang. Kabali must also eliminate Lee to save the Tamil community. What is, however, surprising and a departure from recent movies is the restraint the writers have shown in making Lee an individual and not a representative of the Chinese. In fact, many of the oppressors of the community are Tamilians themselves.

In a strange twist, though, Kabali finds out that he has a daughter who is sent to assassinate him. He also learns that his wife is alive, and tracks her down to Pondicherry. However, Lee is not happy to let Kabali live in peace and on his return to Malaysia, Kabali is thrust once again into battle.

What follows is a bloody sequence that is daring to say the least. Such bloodshed is unheard of in a Rajinikanth movie. As can be expected, Kabali wins in the end.

While the movie is marked by many departures, there are also some things that should have changed but haven't. Radhika Apte, who plays the role of Kabali's wife and was once a labourer, is confined to the home after marriage.

This is a movie Rajinikanth fans will enjoy after the string of failures that preceded it. It has all the "punch dialogues" that his admirers are so fond of. The songs in the movie have already become a hit with the fans, with Nerappu da, which means fire, already having reached anthem status. The music sometimes sets the pace in the movie, and is a tribute to the ability of rock to convey anger like no other genre.

Hopefully this movie is the beginning of the comeback of anger in our mainstream cinema, which has for too long shied away from taking up issues of labourers.