Einstein’s theory of relativity explains time dilation—when time seems to stretch differently depending on your perspective. After catching an early-morning show of Suriya’s , I felt like I had experienced it for real! Although the movie was 152 minutes long, it felt like I had run a marathon. The film kicks off with bounty hunter Francis and his antics as he encounters a strange boy during one of his missions.
The first part of the movie shows signs of the mediocrity to come—Yogi Babu’s usual antics, Suriya’s unusual ones, and Disha Patani’s awkward Tamil set the tone for this section. The film then shifts into a period fantasy, with Suriya playing Kanguva, a tribal chieftain who leads the fight against traitors within his tribe and attackers from rival tribes. Here, Suriya returns to his usual form, delivering a solid performance.
However, the film struggles to build any emotional connection with the audience, leaving scenes meant to convey Kanguva’s anger, pain, and happiness falling flat and unimpactful. The dialogues don’t help, coming off as amateurish at best. If there’s anything more amateurish than the dialogue, it’s the CGI.
In a supposedly tense scene where Kanguva battles a crocodile, the effects were so poor that the theatre erupted in laughter—the crocodile looked about as realistic as a rubber bath toy. Suriya has delivered films like , where he plays a protagonist in the present with ties to a past incarnation. Kanguva follows a similar.