While some films dazzle us with their creative storylines, others fall short in offering anything fresh. Rudhran belongs to the later group. It's a formulaic action movie that follows the standard rules of the genre. Given that it includes aspects of romance, retribution, comedy, and emotion, the movie may partly please aficionados of this genre, but those looking for anything original will be let down.
Rudhran is a good vengeance action film with some fine stunt work and tough themes that would have worked if it had been released a few decades earlier. It's actually unbelievable that we have a movie that does what hundreds of films have done for aeons now in today's Tamil cinema, where getting even for the death of every relative out there has been done and dusted, and at a time when John Wick is killing a town's worth of people avenging the murder of his dog. It is true that the cause of the deaths that our hero must avenge is original, but the question of whether that little innovation merits a movie is one that the movie attempts to answer positively but falls short of.
We first meet Rudhran in the opening scene as he ferociously pursues one of famed criminal Boomi's (Sarath Kumar) goons. As the movie goes on, we are transported back in time to observe Rudhran at work as an IT specialist. He enjoys living with his homemaker mother (Poornima Bhagyaraj) and transport business owner father (Nassar). In the meantime, Rudhran falls in love with Ananya (Priya Bhavani Shankar), a lab technician in a private hospital.
Rudhran must find a job overseas due to the abrupt loss of his father and rising debts. He weds Ananya and sets out on his own to address their money issues. He has no idea that Boomi, a criminal who preys on the families of individuals who have relocated abroad for financial gain, will ruin his life.
Many of the commercial masala films we saw decades ago have as their central theme a guy seeking retribution for the deaths of those who were dear to him. Rudhran uses the same formula, and the majority of the sequences are known in advance. In one moment, a character in the movie tells a group of children about Rudhran's plight and explains why he is on a killing rampage. However, the language doesn't connect with readers, and most of the emotions come across as forced.
The only novel content in the movie is Boomi's origin tale and gangster ascent, which is interesting to watch. However, the extended action scenes involving Boomi and Rudhran leave us wishing they would wrap up sooner. The fine staging, however, is undermined by the discordant background score and the over-the-top punch dialogues. Although a few of the songs in the second half should have been skipped, the love scenes are wonderfully done.
Although Sarathkumar, an experienced actor, plays the adversary, the writing of the character is lacklustre, which is my greatest complaint about Rudhran. The last time he worked with Lawrence, we got Muni 2: Kanchana, which, despite not receiving any kind of critical acclaim, was a big hit and gave the Muni franchise new life as the Kanchana series. But in this case, Sarath is only allowed to play a one-dimensional figure who, with his sharp clothes and Rolls-Royce, looks like he just stepped off the sets of Varisu. He spends the whole first half visiting the locations that Rudhran converted become crime scenes in an effort to respond to the mayhem our hero has caused. Rudhran is actually just another Kanchana movie with ghosts added.a happy family, a villain who is greedy, a showdown that takes place in a temple, and a message about people who are taken advantage of by society.
Raghava Lawrence, Sarath Kumar, and Priya Bhavani Shankar all give respectable performances; yet, the situation may have been better had the movie been shorter. In the final scene, the director seems to be hinting at a sequel, which doesn't seem like a good idea.
Rudhran is merely another example of Tamil cinema's numerous action comedies being recycled.
