Sathru movie review: Naveen Nanjundan’s film is a police procedural sans any thrills

Sathru, starring Kathir and Srushti Dange, is a crime drama about a cop who brings five hardened criminals to justice, involved in kidnapping children for ransom. Sadly it isn’t gripping enough for a thriller.

Film: Sathru

Sathru stars Srushti Dange and Kathir in lead roles.

Director: Naveen Nanjundan

Cast: Kathir, Srushti Dange and Lagubaran

Rating: 2/5

 Debutant director Naveen Nanjundan’s Sathru starts off promisingly. It quickly introduces us to the protagonist, Kathir (played by Kathir), a hot-headed sub inspector, who plays by his own rules but gets the job done, even if it means rubbing his superior officer the wrong way.

Simultaneously, we are also introduced to the antagonist, Prabhakaran (Lagubaran), who leads a gang that kidnaps children for a living. When Kathir and Prabhakaran cross paths in a case, things get personal and what follows forms the rest of the story.

For a story that predominantly unfolds within a span of 24 hours after Prabhakaran vows to avenge the death of his gang members, Sathru needed more suspense and thrills to make this a riveting watch. Even the decent stretches of chase sequences involving action is very poorly choreographed, never quite making the intended impact needed for such thrillers.

It’s quite common for things to get personal between the hero and the villain in police stories but the clash between Prabhakaran and Kathir never takes us to the edge of our seats.

 

Kathir, who has impressed in films like Kirumi, Pariyerum Perumal and Sigai where his characters didn’t require to be heroic, struggles to slip into the shoes of a police officer and there’s not a single moment in the film where he makes us root for his character.

In one of the scenes, we hear Kathir talk about police officers and what makes them fearless. The scene needed a lot of emotion which Kathir never makes us feel in his character throughout the film.

Lagubaran as the antagonist is menacing in a few scenes but gets really monotonous after a point. In order to make his character sound aggressive, he gets unbearably loud and needlessly gets into screaming mode. Maybe in the hands of a better director, we could’ve seen him deliver the same character even more convincingly.

Sathru joins the long list of police thrillers in Tamil cinema that have gone without a trace.

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