Captain Miller

India in the thirties, under colonial rule. Analeesan grew up in a poor village and belongs to a community at the bottom of the caste order. He is not allowed into the temple there. He joins the British army, thinking he will gain a position, and is given the name Miller. When he sees what he is asked to do there he leaves and becomes a fugitive. With a group he begins armed action. At the same time the matter of a temple in his village and the idol inside it grows. Arun Matheswaran directs. Dhanush plays Miller. It is in Tamil. What it treats has two layers: colonial rule and the caste order are inside the narrative at once and the film does not hide the second. The narrative does not show the independence struggle as a single thing; different groups want different things and there is conflict among them. Its violence is explicit and stylised; the director's earlier work runs the same way. G. V. Prakash Kumar's music sets the rhythm. The character played by Dhanush is not built as a hero; for a while the man is only settling his own account. Its limit is structure; the narrative is divided into sections and some strands are not opened enough. It did good business at the Tamil box office. Who it is for: viewers who like period action and genre films carrying social criticism. Who it is not for: the violence is heavy, the running time long, and the narrative loose.