Sulthan review: Karthi headlines a highly predictable but fun action drama

Sulthan movie review: Karthi stars in Bakkiyaraj Kannan’s new film that borrows heavily from films such as Thevar Magan and Maharshi.

Bakkiyaraj Kannan’s Sulthan (not to be confused with Salman Khan’s Sultan) is what you get when you take popular selling points from a few highly successful and celebrated commercial films and package it in a way that you aren’t disappointed even when most of what you watch unfold on the screen feels very familiar.

Sulthan movie review: Karthi plays the lead in Bakkiyaraj Kannan’s film.

Karthi plays Vikram aka Sulthan, a robotics engineer. Sulthan’s father (played by Napoleon) plays a do-gooder, a messiah with an army of rowdies (nearly 100 of them) at his disposal. When a new police commissioner vows to make the city crime-free, he comes after the gang managed by Sulthan’s father with the intention of bumping them in an 'encounter'. Sulthan intervenes and requests for an opportunity to reform the rowdies but the process isn’t as easy as he had envisioned. Does Sulthan succeed in reforming the rowdies forms the crux of the story.

Watch trailer for Sulthan:

From Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar to Mahesh Babu’s Maharshi and Kamal Haasan’s Thevar Magan; Sulthan borrows heavily from these films. Sulthan’s effort to reform the rowdies via farming is a plot point very similar to what Mahesh Babu chooses to do in Maharshi (he leaves everything and takes up farming for his best friend). Karthi’s effort to make people give up their hooligan ways at the cost of his own life is very similar to what we saw in Thevar Magan. In spite of borrowing from quite a few films, Sulthan still manages to engage and entertain, making it a highly predictable but fun action drama.

The film stands out for its action choreography. Few of the action stretches deliver an engaging experience. However, the film hardly makes any impact with its storytelling or characters. Except Karthi’s character, no other actor gets a meaty part to essay. Rashmika, in her maiden appearance in Tamil cinema, is mostly sidelined and so are the actors who play the lead antagonists. Sulthan is Karthi’s show all the way and he’s in his element, shining in a character he couldn’t have played any better.

Sulthan is your quintessential commercial action film that panders to the gallery and is mostly engaging, thanks to the over-the-top treatment and packaging.