Subject: Cobra
Roster: Roshan Mathew, Vikram, and others
Ajay Gnanamuthu is the director.
183 minutes total
2.5 out of 5

Vikram's Madhiazhagan, a brilliant mathematician, begins carrying out assassinations that have the potential to rock the world. Despite extensive protection being deployed, he murders the Prince of Scotland. He gets rid of the Chief Minister of Odisha, startling the security apparatus in India (actually, it may not be that baffled, considering how the CBI behaves). The assassin and the Interpol both decide to pursue him, but a mysterious hacker—whose identity is not revealed until the intermission—seems to be one step ahead of them both.

We see university students from the Department of Criminology talking about topics that a regular person would learn from reading a newspaper report on a well-known murder in the early portions of the first half, somewhere in a developed nation (it's hard to keep track of the globe-trotting this movie does). The ostentatious staging of the scene captures the aimless and somewhat empty tone of "Cobra," whose narrative is never fully told. Even as the titles start to roll, a significant individual is saying something that, if we have the patience to care, can help us better comprehend the protagonist and his complicated existence.

This leads us to "Cobra's" emotional beats, which are hardly ever developed in a way that can emote the viewer. The outstanding representation of a mentally unstable individual by Chiyaan Vikram is hardly improved by the appropriate script. The present might have seemed moving if the memories, which are recounted in sections, had been narrated adequately.

The Hollywood motifs don't really add much value beyond that, such as casting the protagonist as a flawed genius or placing the narrative in multiple nations. The dramatisation is uneven without it since the assassin is a master of disguise.

The romance subplot with Madhiazhagan (Madhi in the Telugu version of the film) and his girlfriend, Srinidhi Shetty of "KGF" fame, contains a few strong scenes that, in hindsight, succeed (Hint: it has the hero looking indifferent even as she pours her heart out). But the song quickly loses its momentum. Even the one song featuring Vikram and the neighbourhood kids is, at best, cliched. For that matter, almost all songs are employed as pointless interludes in a three-hour movie.

The background music by AR Rahman foreshadows high-strung drama and style while the proceedings continue to have pacing problems. When the unusual adrenaline element wears off, attempts are made to up the drama by making references to the hero as "a celebrity" and "a genius."

There is an action scene in the second half while it is pouring severely. It serves as an illustration of how a good plot and respectable execution may work together. It is impossible to talk anything about the scene without giving away the biggest spoiler of all. This gets us to the movie's primary flaw. Due to the manner the narration develops in the second half of the latest Telugu film "Sita Ramam," the interval twist involving Sita can be explored without significantly detracting from the audience's interest. That's not the case with "Cobra" since the bloated proceedings make things appear much more complicated than they actually are.