Sardar

P. S. Mithran's 2022 Tamil film welds a spy thriller to an environmental subject. An intelligence agent branded a traitor and sent into exile returns to stop a dubious water project. Karthi plays a double role: father and son, agent and policeman. The film's real claim concerns the privatisation of water sources and how the bottled water industry devalues public supply, and a public policy argument this concrete is rare in mainstream Tamil action. Mithran had worked the relationship between technology and society in his earlier films, and the method is the same here, placing the argument inside an action plot. The problem is that in the second half the thesis is spelled out in dialogue and the film becomes a manifesto. The choreography of the action sequences and the way Karthi separates the two roles are good. Who it's for: viewers who like Tamil action cinema and genre films carrying a social argument. Who it's not for: anyone who will find the message delivered too directly didactic, or who wants realism from a spy story.