Hero movie review: Sivakarthikeyan starrer is a superhero thriller with an emotional core
Hero movie review: The Sivakarthikeyan, Abhay Deol and Arjun starrer works better as a vigilante film than a superhero thriller.
Hero
Director: PS Mithran
Cast: Sivakarthikeyan, Arjun, Kalyani Priyadarshan and Abhay Deol
PS Mithran, who made a smashing debut with Irumbu Thirai in 2018, is a filmmaker with great commercial sensibilities and he once again proves it in his latest outing, Hero, a superhero thriller that’s powered by a very strong emotional core. While it isn’t a perfect film, it sure has elements that hold it together and make it an engaging watch. The film also works both as a spiritual sequel and tribute to Shankar’s Gentleman.
The film opens with Shakti (Sivakarthikeyan) standing on top of an atrium in a football stadium and we see him wearing a mask, talking about the need to awaken the superhero within each one of us. In the next scene, we get introduced to Shakti as a kid and we’re told he’s a huge fan of Shaktimaan and desires to grow up and become a superhero. Many years later, we meet Shakti again and this time we see him running a printing press. He also sells fake certificates for a living and it is through this job he gets discovered by his nemesis Mahadev (Abhay Deol).
Watch the trailer of Hero here:
Mahadev plays a shrewd businessman and he runs a chain of educational institutions but he also specializes in intellectual property theft. Sathyamoorthy (Arjun) locks horns with Mahadev and when he fails in his attempt, he finds a mentee in Shakti, whom he takes under his wings and trains.
Hero, which has a very interesting core idea, works better as a vigilante film more than a superhero flick. One of the major prerequisites for a superhero film to work is action and Hero barely engages on this front. There’s a decent chase sequence involving a bike and there’s another action episode featuring Arjun but somehow the action never works on the whole. Mithran’s Irumbu Thirai had better action even though it was made on a much lesser budget.
As much as the core idea excites in Hero, the film suffers from heavy dose of preaching. There’s a sub-plot about how our education institutions produce educated labourers and never cares about dreams of students. The film gets quite message-heavy towards the end and Sivakarthikeyan delivers an emotional speech on how parents should stop worrying about grades of their kids and instead focus on their dreams. The intention of the message is laudable but it needed to be told more effectively.
Sivakarthikeyan, who is mostly known for playing comical characters, tries his hands at a serious character and shines in the superhero portion. But this film belongs to Arjun, who is effortless in the action scenes. The whole mentor-mentee relationship with Arjun and Sivakarthikeyan works like a charm. Abhay Deol’s character needed to be stronger and it gets predictable after a point.
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