JAGAME THANDHIRAM Review

Jagame Thandhiram is a 2021 Gangster, Action movie by Karthik Subbaraj, starring Dhanush, Aishwarya Lekshmi, James Cosmo, Joju George and others.

Jagame Thandhiram was one of the most awaited movies this year. As a Karthik Subbaraj film, and after his blockbuster Petta, the movie had many exciting elements. The teaser and Trailer helped to raise the hype even more. Like they say in the Trailer, this is a story of a gangster from Madurai in the streets of London. Suruli (Dhanush) is a gangster in Madurai who always makes atrocities to the big shots and to ones who comes to his path. When Suruli gets an offer from a big gangster Peter Sprott (James Cosmo) in London, Suruli flies to London for this mission to eliminate their rival gangster group lead by Sivadoss (Joju George). The rest of the movie deals with their tactics and fights. Jagame Thandhiram also touches on different topics in between. The reason behind their aggression, Attila (Aishwarya Lekshmi)’s relationship with Suruli, her motive and backstory, Suruli’s reaction etc. More than anything, the movie firmly addresses the issues of refugees and immigrants in other countries. Jagame Thandhiram reminds Superstar’s Kabali. Both the films have some resemblance, a war between local and immigrant gangsters for immigrant freedom and rights.

Jagame Thandhiram follows the same path as any Gangster movies. The technicalities, making, and the actor’s performance makes it a different watch. The movie’s 1st half was more interesting than the second half. The intro scenes and the portion in Madurai portrayed Suruli as a powerful gangster. When the story develops, they showed Suruli as weak, and we saw a different person than his Madurai version. Also, the movie had many scenes which drag the users, especially in the 2nd half.

Dhanush as Suruli did his part perfectly as usual. Usually, we can see a resemblance between characters if an actor did a gangster role or cop role in many movies. We saw Dhanush as a Gangster in some movies before. Let it be Pudhupettai or Maari. There’s no shade of those characters evident in Suruli. Suruli is different, and Dhanush excelled in that role. He almost helped to cover the weak script with his performance. Aishwarya Lekshmi got a great introduction to Tamil Cinema. The popular Malayalam actress appears as a Srilankan Tamil Attila. She had enough space in the movie and had some scenes to dominate. Hopefully, waiting to see her in many Tamil films. James Cosmo as Peter Sprott is another perfect casting. He is terrific and deadly. Joju George is a master class performer. His portion as Sivadoss was movie’s one of the strength. Rest all the casts in Jagame Thandhiram was perfect and apt.

The big positive of Jagame Thandhiram is the songs and BGM by Santhosh Narayanan. The climax song and Rakita was just amazing. It would have been a festive atmosphere if the movie had released in theatres. The cinematography by Shreyaas Krishna was excellent. His work was extraordinary. He beautifully captured the night views and the snow portion in London. The director Karthik Subbaraj was stunning in his filmmaking. He took the movie top notch. The movie’s script could have been better. There weren’t any twist or wow factors in the story like we saw in previous Karthik Subbaraj films. The scenes were predictable for the audience. The movie’s technicalities and the actor’s performance was the saviour. Probably, Jagame Thandhiram will slightly disappoint the audience who went to watch with high expectations. Considering the movie as a Netflix release, the movie has cut for the International audience. But still, they could have trimmed many portions to avoid the lag and duration. The movie would have differently cut if it was a theatrical release. The movie’s ending was a kind of letdown for the viewers. Though it was different, considering the movie genre, it could have ended differently.

Lastly, we found Jagame Thandhiram as entertaining and a watchable movie to enjoy Suruli’s show.