Vishal in a still from ‘Magudam’
| Photo Credit: Vishal Film Factory
After the success of his 2023 actioner, Mark Antony, actor Vishal must have sat and imagined a follow-up masala film that would best the Adhik Ravichandran directorial. I say this with confidence because his latest film, Magudam(which also marks the actor’s directorial debut), is a textbook example of what could go wrong when you try to ape a winning formula. Having picked a story written by director Ravi Arasu (who was originally directing the film before it changed), the producer Vishal seems to have motivated the aspiring writer-director Vishal to ensure that a checklist of tropes that worked in the recent past is in the film.The father-son double action in Mark Antony? Take it, and retain those colourful costumes and some quirks. Is seaport smuggling involved? Okay, but too many such films about drug and ammunition smuggling have come out. Change it to duplicate automobile parts that cause many fatal accidents — we also get something resembling a message. Now, add some token fem-rage for good measure; something for family audiences, right? Give the father character a Robin Hood-esque gangster flashback. Let the son have a Thevar Magan-esque arc. Voila! You have Magudam (meaning ‘crown’ in Tamil). Oh wait, why leave Ilaiyaraaja? Let’s use his songs randomly to become the one-millionth Tamil film in recent times to nostalgia-bait. If you haven’t caught the drift yet, this three-hour-long gangster saga is a terribly contrived and amateurish actioner.
