Kanguva Review: Suriya’s screechy, senseless, 100 per cent stunning spectacle

KanguvaUA Action fantasyDir SivaCast Suriya Bobby Deol Disha PataniRating 155Well itrsquos bit of a reductive thought to assume that a movie is a story Only a story is a story A movie is an experience isnrsquot it Let me briefly take you through this experience then Rather than let you in much on this picturersquos plot that is so barren therersquos nothing you can farm on it anywayHence I plonk myself in the front row of the first show of this film ieKanguva literally man with power of fireFew theatre owners are intuitive enough to recognise that the cinemarsquos first row unlike all the others behind it deserves permanent recliner seatsmdashfor you to suitably lie down put your legs up and allow the eyes to travel easier upwards and sideways of the screen thatrsquos right over your headThe newly opened Miraj Cinema in Wadala Mumbai offers this simple luxurycourtesy Only one other PVR screen in Juhu does the sameThis Miraj used to be Big Cinemas IMAX for the longestmdashuntil it couldnrsquot survive the onslaught of the pandemic Itrsquos returned to Mumbai totally jazzed up with interiors sufficiently renovated Irsquom one of its early customers The excitement is understandableThe screen opens to long sequences from prehistory with tribes from centuries ago mumbling to each other about how therersquos no such thing in life as coincidence Everything is destinedThe screen switches over to the present which is what if not the futuristic scifimdashset in a research centre in Russia from where a boy who was a guinea pig for a cerebral experiment runs awayStraightaway he slips into a desi maalgaadi goodsrsquo train that we learn later brings him down to GoaThese Goa portions are young hip with two hot bounty hunters Disha Patani Suriya along with bumbling assistant Yogi Babu Tamil cinemarsquos omnipresent Johnny Levermdashchilling on beaches bathtubs dancing singing when they arenrsquot out to nab criminals on behalf of local copsThe song is titled YOLO as in You Only Live Once which sounds illogical Donrsquot you die only once but live every day Or YOLO means yoursquove got only one life That rings even more untrue for a film that is effectively about reincarnationBut these arenrsquot the thoughts going through my head Irsquom thoroughly lapping up the 3D of Kanguva as various objectsmdashice cubes shards of glass gems coinsmdashdart through the eyesThe projection captures the overall 3D remarkably Thatrsquos because at no point does the movie ever descend into semidarknessThe screen is always welllit Night scenes or dim lights in general in a 3D movie is a common mistake when eyeglasses have darkened the projection so much that you can barely catch much eventually Only thumbprints on your lens showAlso the bass in the theatre is thumping through my bum The sound feels as immersive as the vast vistas for visuals for the perfect eyetoscreen distanceGod Irsquove missed this Wadala multiplexmdashthat had Indiarsquos first IMAX screen An elixir of life for film buffs in Mumbairsquos eastern suburbmdashalso the preferred venue for some of the biggest premieres in Bollywood 3 Idiots Black Paa Saawariya etcWhy spend so much time discussing a theatre Well what is cinema if not the cinema first no The makers of Kanguva know this Therefore theyrsquove reportedly pumped in around R350 crore on this film chiefly on the productionAs you can tell all throughmdashwith the VFX action choreography photography production designhellip Basically the whole movie as a series of moneyshotsPull out their list of technicians and you can safely hand them most of the yearrsquos top technical category awards Director Siva has taken equal credit for story and screenplay He neednrsquot have botheredAt the centre of this gigantic enterprise is of course Suriya looking every bit the strikingly broad sixpack action star meant to pull in audiences Yeah hersquos given it his all For what Letrsquos seeThere are two Suriyas for the price of one The hero flits between the years 2024 and 1070 But remains chiefly in the latterRomans are apparently attacking his island but hersquos busy fighting the villain from the neighbouring tribemdashthat is halfman halfbeast perennially growling Bobby Deol with a thick furry cape as if therersquos another man stuck to him from behindThe hero and a little boy are related from their previous birth I asked my coviewers to explain some of the befuddling details of this past that is supposedly essential to the plotNone could help So itrsquos not just me seeming lost for the neverending filmrsquos terrible Hindi dub in the first placeThink of Kanguva as an SS Rajamouli tentpole Baahubali RRR More likely Magadheera given reincarnation for the subject Only without Rajamoulirsquos masterwriter K Vijayendra Prasadrsquos scripts Prabhas starrer Salaar 2023 comes closestKanguva tops it still What remains then is SivaSuriyarsquos screechy soulless senseless cent per cent stunning spectacleCan I not just revel in the perfect sound and seat marvelling at dead humans piled up to form a mountain in one scene or the brilliant fightplusdance over Shivarsquos tandav in the otherYeah I couldmdashcarry on watching in admiration feeling nothing In fact I did Just unsure of my mental health at the moment

Kanguva Review: Suriya’s screechy, senseless, 100 per cent stunning spectacle

Kanguva
U/A: Action, fantasy
Dir: Siva
Cast: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani
Rating: 1.5/5

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Home / Entertainment / Regional Indian Cinema News / Article / Kanguva Review: Suriya’s screechy, senseless, 100 per cent stunning spectacle

Kanguva Review: Suriya’s screechy, senseless, 100 per cent stunning spectacle

KanguvaU/A: Action, fantasyDir: SivaCast: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha PataniRating: 1.5/5

Trending Stories

Latest Photos

Latest Videos

Latest Web Stories

Mid-Day Fast

Kanguva
U/A: Action, fantasy
Dir: Siva
Cast: Suriya, Bobby Deol, Disha Patani
Rating: 1.5/5