Just enjoy the experience.

Jailer (2023)
Director: Nelson Dilipkumar

This is a Thalaiva movie. Period. Nobody else matters. A trip down memory lane of what stunts he could do and how he managed to maintain a fanbase after all these years is all that made the difference. It did not matter that the services of all the great Indian actors from all char dhams of Indian cinemas had made a cameo appearance here. It is immaterial that Padaiappa’s arch nemesis, Neelambari, is made to look like a lizard on the wall, clicking occasionally. Who cares about the holes in the fantastical storyline that would make a schoolboy cringe? It is Rajnikanth. Superstar is back!

This is what I missed wondering why everyone was praising Rajni’s latest release to high heaven. Even the usually level-headed ones are also pulled into the merriment. It is not about the story or realism. It is an experience, an immersion, and something entrenched in the psyche. Blame it on Tamil Nadu’s early politics and the involvement of screenwriters, musicians, actors and lyricists with local leaders; cinema is not only an escape route to the mundane, unsettling daily lives but a direction towards how the state should be.

Overall, a Tamil masala movie embodies what life is, how justice should be served and what the philosophy of life is all about.

A lot of responsibilities were placed on the shoulders of Nelson Dilipkumar after Rajnikanth’s past few performances have not really been outstanding. Nelson is a newcomer with previous successes in action thrillers with dark humour.

The recurring opening intertitle since the 90s.

Per his usual persona, Rajni appears as a benign and unassuming retiree jailer who carries life performing his prayers, playing with his grandson and doing work around the house. He morphs into a fire-breathing dragon (@dinosaur - a side joke in the movie), just like in Basha when his son, a police officer, goes missing and is apparently put down by baddies. He does not have to create a new punch dialogue, as reminiscing his previous lines is already more than adequate.

Jailer Muthu assumes his previous avatar of a ruthless prison warden to settle the score with all the gangsters around town. He uses his remote-control tactics to mobilise his reformed gang leaders to help him out. Rajni just has to slit a few throats and fire a few shots. He does not have dance in set dances. All Muthu has to do, is wave his spectacles and snap his fingers.

That is Thalaiva for you. A must for die-hard fans who yearn for the serotonin-infused feeling they felt during Rajni’s blockbusters of the 80s, Murrattu Kaalai and Muthu, for one. It does not matter if it defies logic. It is an experience. Indulge. Nerupudaa! Atharluthuleh? ஆதரத்துலே?

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Just bulldoze through...

Darbar (2019)

Are we living lives that are so unfulfilling? Are we trapped in a quagmire of hopelessness and pessimism that destined us to be forever confined in a sticky web of doom and gloom? Are we resigned to the fact we are too intellectually bankrupt to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps?

Are we waiting for that imaginary knight in shining armour to magically hoist us out of our rabbit hole of melancholy? Is it possible? Or are we imagining another realm where all our aches, pains and attachments would be magically dismantled? 

Perhaps we had fought our fights and had given up. All the power and wealth of the powers that be have disarmed us from the shield of resilience. We have crumbled and wilted to pressure. We are numbed to our addiction to our devices that have sapped our juices to think.

Maybe it is not a new phenomenon. For ages, we of the human race have suffered under the tyranny of dictators and power-hungry madmen. And we have seen saviours in the form of revolutionists, orators, storytellers and even kings who were given demigod statuses. Some were labelled Son of God, Messenger of God and even avatar or representation of God walking on Earth. Rulers were bestowed divine standings when the country was peaceful, crops were bountiful, and natural calamities were absent. When economics went south, their reputations took a beating and acquired demonic ranks.

That must have reinforced the existence of religions. And of angel and demons and when everything else failed, a blissful afterlife in the waiting! 

This film is strictly for diehard Thalaiva fans who have not seen enough of his 80s, 90s and 21st-century mind-boggling, gravity-defying and logic-escaping masala-spaghetti flicks. The storyline is the same old same old time-tested format. One lone-wolf Indian cop sends shivers down the crooks and singlehandedly clashes head-on with the whole brunt of the mafia force with brute force without planning or regards to law and order, police professionalism as well as to human rights.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.