Darbar Review - First Day Reports

Darbar is a 2019 Tamil action, commercial entertainer written and directed by A.R. Murugadoss, starring Superstar Rajinikanth, Suniel Shetty, Nayanthara and Nivetha Thomas in lead roles.

Darbar is another movie which follows almost same pattern as Petta. In Darbar, Superstar is back with another young character after Petta. He appears as a bad, angry cop Aadithya Arunachalam who doesn’t follow the procedures and written rules. He is assigned to wipe out mainly the drug mafias and other connected illegal activities in Mumbai. Rest of the movie deals with the battle between Aadithya Arunachalam and other big goons with some father – daughter emotional connect.

This is completely a Superstar Rajinikanth movie, with his immense charisma and style. Each and every action scenes, dance moves, dialogue deliveries done by him in Darbar was exceptional and surprisingly good. No one will be able to match his energy at this age. Even though we have been enjoying seeing him in this kind of mass characters. We would more love to see him in the characters he done in Kabali, Kaala, Robot and Thalapathi, he should now rethink twice to choose a movie like Darbar. Darbar is just an another old styled commercial movie which has commercial elements which entertain you, but lack a strong story and some expected twist or turns, considering the movie is from the same creator of the movies Ghajini, Thuppakki, Kaththi etc..

There was some other fresh associations this time with Thalaivar. Nayanthara’s character Lilly was joyful and interesting, but the doubt is, do that character deserves her? In recent times, we saw her choosing the roles with less importance and screen space. She should stick to the potential characters which suits her stardom in Tamil Cinema. Nivetha Thomas as Valli did an amazing job in Darbar. The combination scenes with Superstar Rajinikanth and the father-daughter sentiments worked really well. The emotional scenes including Rajinikanth and Nivetha Thomas was a major strength of the movie. Almost every characters did their part well, despite having less screen space demanded by the story. A.R. Murugadoss films are well known for powerful villains like the twins from Ghajini, Dong Lee from 7am Arivu, the sleeper cell head from Thuppakki. But in Darbar, the script had multiple negative roles which all was predictable and less competitive, even the main villain Suniel Shetty couldn’t turn the weak character to a better version. Suniel Shetty as Hari Chopra, the antagonist was not matching to the protagonist. The story didn’t had much scope for him to perform.

The Captain A.R. Murugadoss, the man of blockbusters and records, the man who gave lot of amazing movies. From his 1st movie Ramana, all was going neat and exceptional till Kaththi. After Kaththi, we saw his movies that misses his trademark and even his well famous signature screenplay. Darbar is so weak in writing department. The movie is so predictable, logic less in few scenes and over-commercial. The director like him and our superstars need to stop doing the movies with the same old pattern in order to better the Tamil cinema. The stunts are intolerable. He should change the stunt choreographers next time. The stunts can be artificial, but this is too much to bear. The work they had done in Darbar is worst and wondering how could a director like ARM approved this. As an ardent fan of A.R. Murugadoss and also the request by many others, he ‘should’ stop doing movies back to back, and he should consider taking a long break. He has to come up with some fresh ideas and he will. 

Santhosh Sivan’s cinematography and the songs and BGM by Anirudh helped the movie a lot to maintain the commercial appeal throughout. Especially the BGM was really fabulous. All the other departments except the stunts did an amazing work.

Watch Darbar only for the Thalaivar Rajinikanth. The money you spent for the tickets will be worth spending with his mass performance. Darbar, as a commercial entertainer is definitely a “chumma kizhi” and can be enjoyed during this festival. Don’t expect any kind of A.R. Murugadoss brilliance or trademarks in Darbar.