Jigarthanda DoubleX Movie Review: Karthik Subbaraj’s ode to cinema is both a meta movie and a social commentary | Movie Review News
Karthik Subbaraj is a rare breed of Tamil filmmaker. There are many people who love movies, but Karthi belongs to the few who can use the same art form to express their love for movies poetically and lyrically. It’s one thing to love a craft, it’s another to be good enough to honor it in the same language. Director Karthik Subbaraj has achieved just that with Jigarthanda Double X, the prequel to his second blockbuster, which marked a sea change in the way gangster films are shot in Tamil.
Of course, Jigarthanda DoubleX shares many characteristics with its predecessor. The first part was about an ambitious filmmaker trying to make a movie about gangsters. Here, you pretend to be a filmmaker and infiltrate the inner circle of a gang under the pretext of making a movie. His real purpose is to kill him. This is just the basic story of the movie, but there’s a lot more going on. Karthik has succeeded in bringing the idea to fruition, but the social commentary part feels a little out of place in this world.
Jigarthanda Double X takes time to settle down. A heroic politician (Shine Tom Chacko) aspires to become the next CM and is trying to defeat his rival within his party. He asks his brother Naveen Chandra, a DSP posted in the tribal village, to eliminate all of his rival’s entourage. One of them is Caesar (Raghava Lowellens), a fearsome don of Madurai. Caesar, an avid fan of Clint Eastwood, has an interesting backstory to his name involving the Hollywood star himself. He is performing some kind of ritual when killing his enemies. He dresses up as a cowboy, gives guns to his enemies, and organizes confrontations.
When Caesar is insulted at a party for his dark skin, he decides to become the first dark-skinned star in Tamil cinema. The film is set before Apoorva Ragangal (1975), so Rajinikanth has not yet made his debut. Enter Ray Dasan (S.J. Surya), a prisoner tasked with killing Caesar. The problem is that Ray is neither a filmmaker nor a murderer. Actually, he has a blood allergy. It causes him to have a seizure. However, Ray has a talent for talking and makes Caesar dance to his tunes. This is how “shooting” begins.
The core of the story is the same as the first part. Again, a filmmaker is trying to make a movie about gangsters. Again, there are unresolved family issues with the gang, which play a big role in shaping the character. But while watching Jigarthanda Double X, you don’t really care about such connections as the movie revolves around a lot of drama.
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Drama…something that is missing from our movies these days. While mainstream films have come down to a series of action set-pieces strung together by flimsy stories and emotional quotient, Karthik delights in creating beautiful emotional moments that propel the action. Masu. Ray Dathan’s quote, “No one watches movies about good people anymore” is a clever dig at our cinematic tendencies. It’s as much about current trends as it is an exploration of the film itself. This is just one delicious example of the film’s many self-referential, meta jokes. Karthik’s sly and wicked humor is subtle like everything in the film until it takes the route of social commentary.
Well, Kartik Subbaraj is a filmmaker who has always shown concern for the environment. His silent film Mercury is a great example. Since his short film days, the director has been dealing with Sri Lankan issues. But using the world of Jigarathanda to make a social critique is quite bold on his part. It was a success, of course, thanks to his two great performances from SJ Suryah and Raghava Lawrence. In a way, this movie is a story about finding the hero between two people, and the ending is poetic to say the least. Kartik Subbaraj subverts the concept of a hero while creating two great actors and heroes.
The first part is trying to do a lot of things at once. However, as a meta movie, it is a success. For example, Caesar and Ray are having trouble finding a movie interval. Is meta enough? Caesar keeps teasing that a great interval block is just around the corner, but things end up getting wet. And when the interval block finally kicks in, it’s already a big fuss. Interval Frame is perhaps one of the brilliant cinematic moments in Tamil cinema. Such brilliance outweighs the drawbacks of Jigarthanda Double X.
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Date first published: October 11, 2023 16:34 IST
(Tag Translation)Jigathanda Dabrux