Leo

Parthiban runs a small café in Himachal Pradesh and is a quiet family man. He draws attention by disarming a group of gunmen who come into the café, and soon other people arrive at his door claiming he is the vanished son of a crime family. Lokesh Kanagaraj builds it as an open salute to David Cronenberg's A History of Violence and asks the same question: is this man somebody else, or did he simply decide to stop. Vijay leads. It is the third entry in the shared universe the director built with Kaithi and Vikram, and that connection is made explicit at the end. It was the biggest Tamil box office success of its year. Who it is for: viewers who like Tamil action cinema and interconnected film universes. Who it is not for: anyone put off by hard violence or without patience for three hours.