Indra Movie Review: A troubled policeman is facing suspension, the people in his life barely interact with him, an impulsive rhythm is fed to us through music and frenetic cuts, the protagonist’s paranoia and agitation reaches fever pitch, intrigue builds and we strap in for the answers to unfold. Indra starts strong. The core plot, a simple revenge drama, is folded beneath layers of story threads, which includes a relationship drama, hunt for a serial killer, and a seperate murder mystery. The beginning and the central conceit are interesting enough but it’s the route the story takes to get to that point and the characters guiding us through the story that stops Indra from becoming a satisfying thriller.
Director: Sabarish Nanda
Cast: Vasanth Ravi, Mehreen Pirzada, Sunil, Kalyan Kumar, Anikha Surendran
The film understands that for a mystery to be engaging, the story has to play with audience’s expectations. It is not just about the final reveal but how the audiences are carefully lead through several surprises. However, this is where Indra falters. At the beginning, Indra (Vasanth Ravi) chases after a serial killer played by Sunil. It is not hard to deduce that Sunil’s character isn’t the main antagonist. But, that’s not the problem. Sunil’s loud characterisation, amped up by excessive cinematic techniques (from music to flashy camera work) seems more like a distraction than an engaging detour. Sunil’s wacky, cartoonish read of the character could have been entertaining in a film with a much more vibrant tone.
The film understands that for a mystery to be engaging, the story has to play with audience’s expectations. It is not just about the final reveal but how the audiences are carefully lead through several surprises. However, this is where Indra falters. At the beginning, Indra (Vasanth Ravi) chases after a serial killer played by Sunil. It is not hard to deduce that Sunil’s character isn’t the main antagonist. But, that’s not the problem. Sunil’s loud characterisation, amped up by excessive cinematic techniques (from music to flashy camera work) seems more like a distraction than an engaging detour. Sunil’s wacky, cartoonish read of the character could have been entertaining in a film with a much more vibrant tone.
The second wave of disengagement comes in the form of the central characters. Indra’s relationship with his wife (played by Mehreen Pirzada) lays the emotional foundation of the film. How a series of unfortunate events disrupts the relationship is crucial to the story. We see the romance being presented but there is no spark. Indra’s interpersonal relationship with his friends and colleagues aren’t helping either. Characters talk to each other in a template cinematic manner, and not like people actually interacting with each other. It feels like conventional scene structures and minor character-writing cliches (especially the character motivations) are stuffed into the story without much effort to improve upon their basic iterations. While the idea behind the final reveal is interesting enough, it unfolds in the most direct and expository manner.
Indra takes some interesting and bold choices in how it handles our perspective of the characters. Tamil cinema isn’t new to grey-shaded characters but unless they are the antagonist, their darker shades are mostly muted by likeable traits. A ruthless gangster is still likeable, a brutal murderer still has a sympathetic backstory. It is refreshing to see how Indra never feels the need to sugarcoat the darkness of its central characters with redeemable traits. Any character’s moral compass or emotional reasoning is not how you attach your perspective to them. The audiences are at a liberty to choose who the protagonists and the antagonists are in this story. Indra could have delved into the philosophical layers within this part of the story. It could have discussed the chain of crime and grief, its deceptive allure , the complete inanity of revenge, the redemptive quality of self-acceptance. From how even a seemingly strong relationship withers away under a lack of societal respect to how quickly a seemingly unassuming person resorts to crime under pressure, this film is a fertile ground for philosophical musings but it choses to ignore them. Even the way the performances are extracted are surface-level. The performances are loud and intense but it feels like they were taken out of a library of cinematic knowledge rather than a psychological understanding of the characters.
Indra has enough to keep you engaged but not enough to leave an impact. While it fails to identify the wealth of themes and psychological layers in its story, the film also resorts to stale genre conventions. The issues with the film are not uncommon to contemporary Tamil cinema. Indra is more focused on being a gripping thriller film rather than being an engaging story with something new to say to the audience, and ends up being neither here nor there.