Garudan Review: A Mass Film That Smartly Weaponises Soori’s Vulnerability

Director: RS Durai Senthilkumar

Writers: RS Durai Senthilkumar

Cast: Soori, Sasikumar, Unni Mukundan, Samuthirakani, Roshini Haripriyan, Brigida Saga, Revathi Sharma

Duration: 125 mins

Available in: Theatres

There’s no denying the fact that Garudan is an in-your-face, excessively violent — we’re talking chopped arms flung in the air sort of violent — mass film. It is also a film with one of the most garden variety sources of conflict. Two life-long friends (Sasikumar as Aadhi and Unni Mukundan as Karuna) with quite a lot of clout living in Kombai, Theni, are faced with a conundrum when a politician has eyes for a land belonging to their ancestral temple. It is a film that has dialogue that blames “pon, pen, mann/ gold, women and land” for all the violence that its walking testosterones unleash. However, Garudan is also a film that has an efficient dark horse snuck inside its templated premise: Soori.

Durai Senthilkumar knows exactly what to do with Soori in the film. So, even if we do get a decorated version of the gentle and morally faultless Kumaresan from Vetri Maaran’s Viduthalai, the film is mostly engaging because of the comedian’s turn as a new kind of “mass” actor — one that commands respect with his tenderness. Chockan is an orphan who lives with his found family — Karuna and Aadhi. But his loyalties lie quite strongly with Karuna. Since the film smartly centres much of its emotional core on a premise that we’ve seen play out with many iterations of the Mahabharatha on screen — the ties between Karna and Duryodhana — it doesn’t take us too much time to buy into these relationships. But what happens when Chockan’s loyalties are put to test? Garudan becomes an interesting study of an underdog’s psyche once it delves into this territory. 

Soori brings immense warmth to Chockan, a man who heartbreakingly accepts the bare minimum for something it is not: a treasured friendship. He’s taken in and fed by Karuna when he has nothing to fill his stomach. But observe how he always sits down or stands with folded hands anytime he’s in a frame with Karuna. He knows his place: a watchdog that sits on the side and accepts food and love with immense gratitude. While Soori is excellent in these scenes, one keeps waiting for its anti-caste undertones to really take off. But Garudan isn’t that kind of movie. A Muslim woman marries into a deeply misogynistic Hindu family. A man is derided for not knowing which caste he belongs to. But Garudan barely scratches the surface, and sometimes looks like it doesn’t really want to. Instead, we get powerful one-off moments where a woman feels like an equal in a marriage only after her husband’s arm is severed, or when a crushed Chockan cries into the abyss for making an unquestioning “dog” like him into a “human being.”

Samuthirakani and Sasikumar give lived-in performances, even if their roles seem like something that they’ve painfully enacted in many films before. It’s as if certain scenes in Garudan are tailor-made for Soori. Now that can usually be a good thing or a bad thing in a film like this. The movie could’ve easily gone the comedy track route, considering it has a brilliant situational comic in its midst. But it doesn’t. Garudan instead uses Soori’s timing for comedy as part of his character itself. Durai Senthilkumar does the same thing for Soori’s action sequences, leaving way for one of the most wholesome interval blocks in recent Tamil film “mass” history. 

In the end, it all comes down to how this director re-introduces a new kind of hero. Jithu Madhavan crowned Fahadh Faasil a modern mass king in Aavesham by fully surrendering to the actor’s wild yet delicate side. Durai Senthilkumar tries to do the same with Soori. While it might not be as effective in its writing, Soori quite easily makes up for it in Garudan.