Sangathamizhan HD Released

Sangathamizhan is a generic mass hero movie with its story elements only all too familiar. The protagonist is larger than life, and is revered like a God by his people. Like any mass hero, he can take on a dozen men and come out of the fight unscathed. There is the look-alike switching places angle. We get a rich-boy-poor-girl romantic track. We have a comic sidekick whose sole function is to build up the hero. There is even a mandatory fair skinned heroine from the North. And villains who are also from the North. And like most Tamil films of the last few years that have featured a big star, the antagonist is a corporate entity that cares more for the green of the currency than the green of the earth.

But Vijay Chandar seems to know that he is treading on familiar ground. So, he treats this material with a knowing wink that sets his film apart just that little bit. But what makes the film entertaining to an extent is his lead actor, Vijay Sethupathi. The actor, too, knows that mass heroism isn't his brand, so he constantly uses his laid-back persona to stop things from turning too serious. In a way, he has his cake and eats it, too, because he gets to do all the stuff that mass heroes do, right from the silhouetted introduction shot to delivering punchlines, without making it seem wannabe. He even makes some of the borderline patriarchal statements that his character makes seem like just practical thoughts.

He plays Murugan, an aspiring actor, for whom Kamalini (Raashi Khanna), the daughter of a rich Industrialist (Ravi Kishan). When the father chances upon Murugan, he is struck by his resemblance to Tamizh, the leader of a village in Theni, who has stopped him from setting up a copper plant in the place. Having used Kuzhandaivelu (Ashutosh Rana), a local politician, to murder Tamizh and his influential family, he tries to make his plan succeed by sending Murugan as Tamizh there.

Sangathamizhan does take its own time to get to its core plot, but until then, it is Vijay Sethupathi and Soori who provide us with humour and hold our interest. Even the romantic track between Murugan and Kamalini is slightly different. And the film doesn't work itself up over the cause it eschews and doesn't come across as preachy or self-righteous. But the weakly written villain characters, with miscast actors who never make us feel like they could be a threat to the protagonist, and the sameness of the stunt scenes pull the film down, leaving it lacking punch.