Ever since Kanguva was announced I had low/no hopes on it for just two reasons. Director Siva’s unwillingness to learn from his past mistakes and his sheer lack of conviction for his vision. Now, those two are what exactly brought this letdown of the humongous efforts of various technical teams along with Suriya, who’ll be bearing the biggest cost of them all.
Kanguva by Siva & team focuses on a promise made centuries ago that finds a chance to redeem itself in present-day Goa. Tbh, those portions were hell to sit through. Not even a single dialogue worked, the fake accents and mannerisms of almost all the actors involved, the abomination of treating movie scenes like some viral Insta reels, and top of all the Vivegam-esque secret squad or whatever that is called, looking straight outta cheap Hollywood parodies. This is what I meant when I said ‘his sheer lack of conviction for his vision.’
Having said all that, what pains me the most is the wasted efforts of so many people involved in Kanguva. Starting with Suriya, in the pre-historic portions, the man gave it all yet his performance felt like a shadow of what he used to be. Some emotions, we know they are lurking within Suriya, but they never see the light. Looks like someone (ykw) didn’t want the emotions to come out subtle or the way the audience would have found it different/interesting.
The way the pre-historic saga was imagined with distinct identities for the quintet of islands with detailed efforts of the art direction, production design, costumes and prosthetics departments feels so rich and good and the hard work is there for us to see. The way Madhan Karky (I think) named those islands and the tribes while making them speak Tamil in a slightly different manner than we used to do at present gives it a rich linguistic flavour that one expects from epics of such scale.
In short, as years go by, Kanguva will be studied as how not to make an epic-scale movie without having the conviction to believe in your vision or taking the audience as mediocre/for granted.
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