Petta

Kaali arrives at a boarding school as a deputy warden. He is a calm man; he takes an interest in the students, stands up to the group doing the bullying and changes the order of the place. Nobody knows his past. Then someone arrives from outside and recognises him. The narrative goes back: a reckoning in the north years ago, a politician and his son, a family lost. Kaali's coming here is no accident. Karthik Subbaraj directs. Rajinikanth plays Kaali; Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vijay Sethupathi are in the cast. The film was a large commercial success in Tamil cinema. What the narrative builds is the star image itself; Subbaraj constructs the film as a reference to Rajinikanth's career and uses quotations from his older films. That approach is what it was most talked about for; the narrative works less as a story than as a celebration. The director's own manner shows too; the violence is hard and the humour dark. Anirudh Ravichander's music sets its rhythm. Its limit is the script; the flashback in the second half runs long and the women's parts have no function. Who it is for: viewers who like mainstream Tamil films and Rajinikanth. Who it is not for: the narrative is star centred, the plot weak, and the running time long.