 "Fans of superstar Rajinikanth watching and celebrating the screening of \"Kabali\" at a theatre in Chennai")
You wanted badass, you get industrial levels of badass in this Pa Ranjith movie. His previous film Madras had a delightful off-kilter sensibility. Sadly, here he spends too much time deifying his larger-than-life protagonist. And that makes the movie a giant 150-minute slog.
It opens with the erstwhile gangster getting released from a Malaysian prison after spending 25 years there. As soon as he steps out, he's apprised of how his rival gang (consisting of Kishore and Winston Chao) has grown from strength to strength and has turned the city into a teeming hub of drug abuse and prostitution.
Kabali starts cleaning up right away, while getting reunited with his daughter and wife along the way. You have to be punch drunk on Rajini mania to sit through the movie without dozing off or trying to play Pokemon GO at the cinema itself. The only saving grace is the man himself. The wizened visage hasn't lost a bit of its grace and infectious scowl.
His gait is intact and so is the swoonworthy style. If only Ranjith had paid some attention to the script that has more holes than any Swiss cheese worth its name. It's a rehash of typical ‘80s Tamil movies. There's mindless revenge, the man expounds on rights for outsiders in a foreign land, wife and husband have a teary reunion after more than a couple of decades. The flashback sequences are even worse. Earlier Rajinikanth movies would like the audience to suspend their disbelief when he used to defy gravity, albeit in a stylish way; now, his directors expect to still keep that disbelief suspended when ridiculous scenes are strung together for a long stretch. Talk about getting trapped in one’s image as an actor.
Among other actors, Radhika Apte does her bit well, especially as an aged woman. After Ramyakrishna in Padayappa, here's finally an actress who looks like a perfect fit next to Rajinikanth. Dhansika as, (SPOILER ALERT!!), Kabali's gun toting daughter with a crew cut is a decent example of inspired casting. The villains are their cardboard selves.
G Murali's wide-lensed cinematography shows Kuala Lumpur in its complete glory and Santhosh Narayan's music is largely functional but he deserves appreciation for the virulently catchy staccato rock beat that keeps playing in the background.
The love people have for Rajinikanth is like an axe. It cuts deep. But even their patience is running thin now. I knew the movie was on a slippery slope after the first utterly fabulous ten minutes, when the fans at the 6 a.m. screening in Mumbai went uncharacteristically silent until the last ten minutes when their demigod returns to his element.
The action sequences are a crashing bore. There are enough unimaginative shootouts to make the movie look like a protracted ad film for National Rifle Association of America. Barring one fight in the beginning and one in the second half in Pondicherry, the others look grindingly dull.
If you want a taste a sliver of that illustrious career on big screen, you ought to watch it in Tamil. English subtitles are being beamed across the world. His sonorous Malaysian gangster baritone was music to my ears even though I don't know any Tamil.
This is one of those movies that tells the millennial "believe the hype that this man generates" but it'll definitely not find itself getting canonised. The rest will be wallowing in nostalgia and raiding YouTube and torrent sites. L P Hartley once said “The past is a different country. They do things differently there.” Not on Planet Rajini though.
