Sarpatta Parambarai A Helluva Fight

 

I like sports flicks even if they are not game – changers in that rousing genre. The Longest Yard, Remember the Titans, Rush, Dodgeball, the entire Rocky franchise and Creed are films I have watched more times than I care to remember. Million – Dollar Baby is one of my all-time fave films and it never fails to reduce me to a miserable puddle of tears. In short, I love sports films, unless they are made in India. Here people do weird things like cast Priyanka Chopra as Mary Kom, give Farhan Akhtar a chance to log in a whole lot of gym time to play Milkha Singh unconvincingly or whoever it was he played in Toofan, etc. Even the critically acclaimed Irudhi Suttru was a disappointment because I felt it was about a lot of things but the boxing itself which it was purportedly all about wound up somewhere at the bottom. Which is why Pa. Ranjith’s Sarpatta Parambarai was a refreshing change.

After the promise Ranjith showed with the excellent Madras, he went on to make the awful Kabali and Kaala which prompted me to set the bar really low for Sarpatta Parambarai but the film, while not lacking in the ideology he cares so much about and which yields mixed results cinematically speaking, treats the material with a certain dignity and has such innate respect for the sport of boxing, you can’t help but be charmed.

Set in the 1970s, against the backdrop of the emergency, Sarpatta Parambarai tells an oft told tale of an underdog, Kabilan (Arya), who rises from the dumps only to fall so that he can rise again. None of this is groundbreaking, but Ranjith can be counted upon to freshen this stuff up. It helps that Ranjith always opts to work with a powerhouse cast. Pasupathy, who plays coach Rangan is just pure dynamite! He conveys so much with his eyes and subtle use of body language, that it is impossible to take your eyes off him. The man is a study in understatement! John Vijay who is an Anglo – Indian father figure to Kabilan is excellent. The supporting cast of boxers - Santhosh Prathap as Raman, John Kokken as Vembuli and Shabeer Kallarakkal as Dancing Rose are so good, they easily eclipse Arya who is in his element in the training montages and inside the ring where he does a decent job of conveying intensity and aggression but in all the other scenes it is obvious that he is the lightweight among an impressive array of heavyweights. He is particularly horrendous in a scene where he has an emotional meltdown and wallows in self-pity. But the good thing about his character is that he is no saint, and despite his sins, you do root for him.

Kabilan’s journey is an impressive one although I found it hard to swallow that a rookie could take out pros in successive rounds with next to no training. Why do we keep showing this in our films? It doesn’t happen that way folks. Excellence in sports takes so much more than talent, aggression or inspiration. Boring things like endless training, hard work and dedication are called for. A couple of training montages before a big match is just not going to cut it. Just once, I would like to see a protagonist who lives, eats, sleeps, breathe his chosen sport allowing for no distractions. I doubt a project like that would be green – lit but I daresay it takes just that kind of maniacal commitment to achieve sporting glory!

Be that as it may, of course we have to talk about the caste as well as class divide that is always present felt in Ranjith’s films. There are characters like Thanigan (Vettai Muthukumar) who would prefer the likes of Kabilan to beg for alms in front of their homes, shovel up cow dung or slave for them but draw the line at him going on to represent and win for their Sarpattai clan. His devilry to stop the progress of Kabilan is reprehensible, unpalatable and in the climatic stretch, somewhat unconvincing. One wishes Ranjith would temper his passionate beliefs with just a touch of balanced perspective because ironically, while he has raised his voice against those who would trod upon the rights of lower caste members and blue – collar workers, he seems to endorse those boxing clans like ‘Sarpatta parambarai’, ‘Idiyappa parambarai’ etc. though it is almost a given that it must be a struggle for aspiring boxers to gain acceptance to these clans with the inordinate pride some of them take in their identity and their reluctance to let outsiders in. Sounds familiar? I have always wondered at the bias displayed by people who raise their voice against bias.

That aside, critics always rave about the ‘powerful’ women characters in Ranjith’s films but I beg to differ. Bakkiyam (Anupama Kumar) as Kabilan’s mum, Mariamma (Dushara Vijayan) his wife and even, Sanchana Natrajan who plays another character’s wife while solid performers are given nothing to do but scream and berate the men in their lives in an endless litany. The interminable shrieking is at the shrillest pitch possible and really grates on the nerves. It is commendable that these women make the men earn their respect, but I would have appreciated them more had they gone about it in a less hysterical manner. And I really wish, that a woman who repeatedly whacks her son with a broomstick isn’t applauded as ‘feisty’. Abuse is abuse whether it is a man or woman meting it out and I wish folks would stop treating it like a perfectly acceptable thing.

However, grouses notwithstanding, Sarpatta Parambarai has some beautiful moments. I loved that Dancing Rose berates his buddy’s less than honourable conduct while later bolstering the same fallen comrade by telling him that there is no shame in a loss if you have fought with honor and given the best you have got. I misted up at that. Incidentally, he is the only character who is a decent sport. Everyone else with their mulish clannishness including the hero would have done better to exalt the sport of boxing more than their petty rivalries.

Another aside worthy of a mention is when coach Rangan returns from jail and has a private moment with his wife, where they exchange a look of heart melting fondness though they are in the middle of a crowd… Ranjith does his best work when he brings out these small, intimate moments that establish the bonds shared by his characters and these triumph over the more epic stretches he stages though they are effective too. Ultimately, Sarpatta Parambarai may not quite deliver a knockout punch but it is definitely a helluva fight!

 

Fear Street Part Two: 1978

 

Was there ever a horror movie prequel/sequel that was ever worth a damn? Fear Street Part Two tries hard, it really does, but nothing really sticks. The axe-swinging murderous puppet type controlled by the witch, Sarah Fier whose curse has haunted Shadyside for centuries supplies the gruesome thrills and chills in Camp Nightwing which was alluded to in Part One. Ruby Lane (who sings a sweet little song while wielding her knife) and Billy Barker (A little boy who bashes heads in with a baseball bat) make an appearance too. This set – up harkens back to Camp Crystal Lake and the terrifying Jason of Friday the 13^th fame so one mentally prepares oneself for happy little campers getting slaughtered and also wonders how parents still send their kids to these places were the counselors are either high or preoccupied with getting laid with their young charges being the last things on their minds!

There is a little more backstory about the witch and the emotional beats are supposed to be supplied via a soured relationship between two sisters who have diametrically opposing views about how best to handle being stuck in an accursed place and yet another messed up relationship between former friends. They resolve their differences while being hunted by one of the witch’s minions, watching their friends and charges hastened to horrendous ends and screaming fit to bust their lungs. None of it works though. This time around, the director Leigh Janiak, ramps up the bleakness and darkness which seeks to drive the horror quotient through the roof but since the film is nothing but a set up for a major reveal in part three, most of it is repetitive and the schtick gets old.

And a pet peeve is the continued tendency to portray witches in the worst possible light never mind that the infamous witch hunts which spanned centuries and claimed the lives of thousands of innocent women whose only crime was that they didn’t stand and pee was one of the darkest chapters in history. It is so tiresome that this tired old trope of the wicked witch is still being mined to create loathsome women characters. But hopefully, in the spirit of wokeness which seems to be the driving force behind art these days, part three will turn things on its head and reveal that the witch is not the real villain of the piece but a victim who has slaved across the centuries to save Shadysiders from the same malevolent creature that claimed her life and unleashed a brood of mass murderers. Now wouldn’t that be something?

Fear Street Part One: 1994

 

It was only a matter of time before the back storied world – building and myth - making that powered one too many money – minting superhero franchise seeped into the horror genre. We saw glimpses of it in the Conjuring and Insidious universe which has been yielding increasingly diminished returns to begin with and now, Leigh Janiak has upped the ante with her offering of three movies based on R.L Stine’s series, “Fear Street”, spanning centuries, to be dropped in installments over the course of a month on Netflix. The film is not a faithful adaptation and is a much darker take on R.L. Stine’s work which was written for children and therefore does not feature the body count, blood and gore that are prerequisites for a slasher flick. In fact, his books were once famously described as a ‘literary training bra’ for Stephen King.

“Fear Street Part One: 1994” is set in Shadyside aka Shittyside. The town has an unfortunate history of ordinary people suddenly losing all their marbles and going on killing sprees. This is exactly the sort of thing that can give a place a bad rap and lead to plummeting property value, plunging the citizenry into poverty.  Their problems are compounded when the film opens with yet another Shittyside massacre in a mall and the people have to cope with the scale of the tragedy even as the media highlights similar gruesome incidents from the past contrasting the town with the neighboring Sunnyvale, which is picture perfect and prosperous to boot. Naturally, they tend to look down on Shadysiders, going so far as to blame them for their perpetual wretchedness.

Deena (Kiana Madeira) has just put together a bitter mixed tape for her ex, Sam (Olivia Welch) who has moved to Sunnyvale and is not inclined to buy into theories that a witch named Sarah Fier has placed a curse on the town making it a breeding ground for serial killers who go about the business of slaughter in wildly creative and surpassingly gruesome ways. Deena’s brother (Benjamin Flores Jr.) is a bit of a nerd who has made it his business to study the legend of the witch. Her friends Kate (Julia Rehwald) and Simon (Fred Hechinger) are selling pills to their school mates in a determined effort to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and better their lives. On an eventful night, Sam accidentally disturbs the grave of the witch and paints a bullseye on her back, dragging this oddball group of friends into a night of mayhem and murder.

Janiak treats these characters with respect and it is why we come to care for them though they can be abrasive and unlikeable on occasion. They make a lot of bad decisions but they are not blamed or shamed for it, because the film understands the brashness and desperation of youngsters who are heartily sick of adults, unwilling to take the time to listen to their fantastical claims, wrapped up as they are in their own worlds. Fittingly enough, the adults barring a few exceptions are mostly absent. Even the burgeoning sexuality of these characters is not treated as something to be used for purposes of titillation or as a cautionary tale. This sensitivity is not common in this particular genre and makes for a refreshing change of pace.

“Fear Street Part One: 1994” is high on nostalgia, the occasional jump scare and boasts of a rousing score but it is hardly the most frightening film out there even though parts of it are truly disturbing and make you feel a little queasy. Even so, it is interesting enough to make you want to come back for the second installment.

 

Time Slows to a Crawl in Chris Pratt’s Tedious Time Travel Trudge

The Tomorrow War  (Amazon Prime) is a wearisome trudge across some seriously unappealing sludge, that makes you want to examine your own lack of judgement when it comes to making decent viewing choices. Director Chris McKay has laboriously put together a film about time travel, vicious, ungainly looking killer aliens who aspire towards nothing more elevating than devouring humans for food and breeding which thoughtless approach on their part puts the future of the human race in jeopardy. This sort of thing has the potential to be entertaining but McKay does not bring anything that is remotely original, fun, or quirky to the table. The film gives the impression of material that has been regurgitated after multiple trips up and down Hollywood’s alimentary canal.

Chris Pratt’s Dan Forester is ex – military, who is presently working as a high school teacher and like every character in every movie or show nowadays, he is extremely angst – ridden with his lot in life and all set to endanger his happy family life comprising a sweet wife and adorable daughter by hurtling down a dark path he has always sought to avoid thanks to a father (JK Simmons) who left him with abandonment issues, when troops show up from the future with dire tidings. They are fighting an unequal war with the aliens and their ranks are so depleted that they have no choice but to enlist troops from the past.

Forester is drafted and finds himself plunged into violent conflict 30 years in the future with a motley crew of fellow soldiers, none of whom are remotely memorable. But the most arresting of the lot is the commanding female officer played by Yvonne Strahovski (Of Chuck and The Handmaid’s Tale fame) and thanks to the nature of the relationship they share, there is a lot of maudlin emotional fare to wade through. Strahovski acquits herself decently but Pratt is ill – suited for this kind of thing which does not allow him room for his customary swagger and roguish charm that was more gainfully employed in The Guardians of the Galaxy and The Jurassic World franchises. Here his lugubrious expressions are meme – worthy but little else. As for the brilliant JK Simmons he is given precious little to do, though he excels in every frame he is in and of all this movie’s many offenses, this lapse has to be the worst.

The Tomorrow War trundles along to a ho – hum climax and there is lot of gruesome, alien gore for those who enjoyed films like the Alien with squishy stuff, gross bodily fluids, and lots of ear – drum shattering shrieking but for the rest of us all that is left, is regret over wasted time, that could have been better spent scrolling for something better to watch.

Tigress Tigress, Burning Bright

 

Amit Masurkar’s Sherni is an understated gem of a film. Unlike what the title suggests, this flick is not exactly an adrenaline junkie’s wet dream with thrills and chills to spare, though it does have moments of tension. DFO Vidya Vincent (Vidya Balan) has her task cut out for her when she finds herself in the unenviable position of somehow saving T12, a man – eating Tigress who is actually more sinned against since she has been forced out of her natural habitat thanks to corporate greed, corruption, greed and dried – up watering holes. It doesn’t help that Vidya is up against entrenched patriarchy, self – serving bosses, blood – thirsty hunters, and smarmy politicians who are keen to use any crisis to their advantage and shore up their vote banks.

My favorite Vidya Balan performances are the ones that are pitched at a lower register (Kahaani, Parineeta) as opposed to her OTT turns in films like The Dirty Picture. She performs with admirable restraint here and has seldom been more effective. Her character has a demanding job where the fact that she is extremely good at what she does counts for beans when she is repeatedly thwarted by chest – thumping goons, hopped up on testosterone or lazy, ineffectual, nightmarish bureaucratic types. In Hassan Noorani (Vijay Raaz who turns in a fine performance) who is also ridiculed as a ‘butterfly hunter’ by others of his gender for not being in a tearing hurry to pick up a gun and join the hunt, she finds an ally who like her does his job well under difficult circumstances.

Masurkar has a light touch when it comes to traversing a host of sensitive subjects like patriarchy, ecology, and politics. For instance, he subtly draws attention to the difficulties faced by working women through various aspects of Vidya’s situation. For instance, she is expected to entertain her husband (Mukul Chadda), his mother and her own in the middle of a high – pressure hunt and is pulled up for not wanting to have children and scolded for not adorning herself with jewelry to look attractive for her husband. Having hurriedly added a few accessories to her plain – Jane ensemble she is presented with the sight of her husband who is wearing shorts and a tee. The fact that he showers her with compliments does little to allay her annoyance.

There are many points when Vidya is tempted to quit, because all her efforts seem to be amounting to nothing. But there is a dogged determination to this character which is proof that sometimes a little dedication and an unwillingness to give up can make a big difference. There is a beautiful stretch where Jyoti (Sampal Mandal) who is one of the dwellers on the fringe of the forest draws Vidya’s attention to the impoverished circumstances of her community as well as the struggle to make a decent living and educate their children. The DFO not only listens but actually offers a viable solution to help the women make some money and empower themselves. Her good deed is rewarded when Jyoti in turn helps her at a particularly soul – sapping low point. Poignant moments like this one and Masurkar’s refusal to take the easy way out and offer manufactured feel – good answers to the questions raised by his film ensure that Sherni will stay with you long after the credits have rolled.

The Little Things is a Gargantuan Fail

 

Sometimes, it is hard to decide what to watch on Netflix/Amazon Prime/Disney – Hotstar etc. because there seem to be way too many choices but nothing that is really worth your while. So you are happy when a film like The Little Things comes along because Denzel Washington plays the lead. And if that were not enough, Rami Malek who was brilliant in Bohemian Rhapsody and Jared Leto (you hope he is chomping at the bit to make amends for his horrendous turn as the Joker) round out the trio of luminous Academy Award winners. Naturally, you have to watch the film and hope that your expectations aren’t doomed to damnation and it is not a criminal waste of time.

Unfortunately, The Little Things disappoints at every turn. Joe Deacon (Washington) who was a bit of a legend back in the day as an L.A cop is caught in a downward spiral after getting divorced from his wife, botching a major case and suffering a heart attack. Currently, he is out in the boondocks at a place called Bakersfield stuck in a dead end job for a man of his supposedly superior talents. But when a serial killer on the loose, is making merry and racking up a body count, Deacon finds himself in the thick of things. Naturally, he is haunted by his past and sees victims from his cases at his cheap lodgings. It has gotten to a point where it seems there is no lead character be it in a movie or series who is not weighed down by a horde of demons from the past.

Jim Baxter (Malek) meanwhile, is a star on the rise but though wary at first, he is drawn to Deacon whom he has very effectively replaced and they form a partnership. Before long, the duo zero in on the prime suspect, a creepy dude with the required crazy eyes and serial killer vibe named Albert (Leto). What follows is supposed to be a thrilling cat and mouse chase with applause worthy gravitas but it is largely a drab and dour snooze fest that goes nowhere.

The Director John Lee Hancock has trouble finding his footing from the get go. He seems intent on striking a self – important note, trying to prove that the material is above the usual stuff in this genre, offering something more substantial than the cheap thrills and guilty pleasures afforded by standard slasher fare by modeling it along the lines of Seven. However, the somberness and tacked on solemnity notwithstanding, the film is nowhere near as smart as it wants to be. Neither is it remotely satisfying since it lands with an ungainly thud in the no – man’s land between highbrow and trashy entertainment.

As for the triple threat match between the three Academy award winners, it is Denzel for the win. The man is incapable of turning in a lousy performance and were it not for him, this film would be unwatchable. He has a certain flair for elevating the most unpromising of material and making every frame he is in, shine. There is a scene where he is the recipient of an unexpected kiss from a sweet little girl and the unguarded tenderness and delight he effortlessly evinces convinces you that few actors can simply be in the moment and respond organically like a real person would the way he can.

Malek and Leto would do well to learn from the master. The former is so mannered it is painful to watch him and one shudders at the prospect of him taking up the challenge of playing an effective Bond villain. Leto’s exaggerated manner and desperation to prove that he is deserving of another Academy award is even more excruciating.

The trio plod to a problematic climax that would have raised a lot of disturbing questions about acceptable behavior from cops with compromised moral compasses had it been effective. But since it is a crash and burn, there is nothing to do but walk away from The Little Things without a backward glance and smack yourself on the head for not choosing better.

Jagame Thanthiram: Goofy Gangsters who are not sure if they are into Gore or Gooey Sentiment

 

Karthik Subbaraj is an ideas man. This is evident at the conceptual level of his arresting body of work which abound with some doozies and yet, none of it really amounts to anything in his films. I blame his writing skills (or rather it’s lack) for the failure of his intriguing ideas from cohering into an entirely satisfying movie. It is just too bad because parts of Jagame Thanthiram shine with Subbaraj’s especial brand of flamboyance, whackiness and singular stamp as a director who is almost always worth paying attention to.

Jagame Thanthiram starring Dhanush who has a whale of a time playing the petty gangster Suruli who finds himself working for a white supremacist after a truly asinine sequence of events, has difficulty making up its mind about the kind of film it wants to be. On the one hand you have the murderous gangsters who are stuffed to the gills with coolth (it is a distracting Tarantino hangover, because nowadays even Tarantino seems to find it difficult to pull off what he used to with such inimitable flair) and then you have the sentiment and seriousness surrounding weighty issues like racism, anti – immigration politics and the refugee crisis. The tonal shifts between the two are so jarring it makes it impossible to enjoy the fun parts or take the serious portions seriously.

Suruli is a somewhat unconvincing creation though Dhanush does his best and has some exemplary moments when he is not himself nursing a Rajnikanth hangover. His character is a clever, cruel, callous fellow who is always saying witty stuff moments before blowing a guy’s brains out or making homemade bombs to blast his enemies into oblivion, snorting with laughter after being dumped on the day before his wedding and thinking nothing of betraying someone if the price is right. It is all supposed to be good fun, yet, inexplicably a sob story is all it takes to make him turn over a new leaf while retaining all those savage elements of his earlier persona. At various points in the movie he is referred to as a rat but one character tells him he should try being a fox (or was it a wolf?) and this becomes a mutant metaphor for Suruli as well as Jagame Thanthiram because both fail to come together given the unmixable mix that went into the composition.

Aishwarya Lekshmi, plays the heroine who is named Attila (after the Hun?) and has more to do than is usual in a Tamil film committed to worshipping on the altar of the hero’s star power, but I am tired of being grateful for small mercies. Her role is to propel the narrative forward with a flashback about war – torn Lanka and the ensuing refugee crisis. But it is hard to buy any of her actions. After all she has been through it seems unlikely that she would be in such a tearing hurry to hand over her heart to a trigger – happy, violent gangster with a history of screwing people over just because he professed to being cool with her widowed state and bought her son a gift. Like the others in this film, she has her murderous moments too and they are every bit as convincing as her lovesick state.

Normally, white men in Tamil films are caricatures and the English dialogue is hard on the ears. Despite some effort to amend this sorry state, Peter Sprott who is the big bad racist gangster played by James Cosmo is a bit of a caricature and the dialogue is embarrassing in places and no amount of f – bombs dropped with casual abandon can salvage the situation. And seeing the man wield an ‘aruvaal’ to slay a rival gangster was unintentionally hilarious.  

Subbaraj is obsessed with his twists and they worked in his first film, Pizza but these have been yielding diminishing returns since then in addition to compromising the emotional arcs of his characters. A veteran gangster makes an inexplicable decision to place his trust in one who has just slaughtered some of his best men including his right hand. So when he pays the price for it, you are not moved enough to get worked up on his account even though he makes a powerful point about treachery being the bane of his people just before he croaks. For similar reasons it is hard to respond to the ubiquitous ‘mother sentiment’ when a mother is waxing eloquent about how murder and thievery are forgivable because circumstances drive a man to do these things whereas treason is never justified.

Of course, some of Subbaraj’s messages which have been shoehorned into this unwieldy mess of a movie are laudable. I liked Suruli’s remark in response to a character who tells him that some among the British resent that their beautiful, shiny white country has been ‘blackened and browned’ by immigrants. He points out that the Brits seemed happy enough when they had conquered as well as looted India and attempted to whitewash it. In another instance, Suruli makes an excellent point about how Indians ought to root out their caste bias because outside India so many Indians are treated the way the lower castes are treated here. Some of the dialogue teems with wit and the occasional scene crackle with energy and Subbaraj’s trademark inventiveness. Santhosh Narayanan’s music is a plus and works wonderfully to create mass moments. In places, it even elevates the mediocre material. Overall though, Jagame Thanthiram has too many misses and far fewer hits, making this oddball venture a massive letdown.