Sigma Movie Review:

With a motley gang of struggling nobodies, a ruthless underworld boss, a backdoor gambling den, and a heist involving a prized pen drive, Sigma has all the ingredients for a pulpy crime caper. Yet, for all its elaborate plotting and big action set-pieces, Jason Sanjay’s directorial debut rarely settles on what kind of film it wants to be. It oscillates between goofy, self-aware crime comedy and a self-serious action vehicle, while its characters remain frustratingly distant. Plenty happens in Sigma, but very little that makes us care about the people at its centre.

Sigma begins with business magnate and underworld boss Kotlapatti Veerayya Reddy (Sampath Raj) and Ezhil (Kiran Konda) striking a deal after the latter proposes a way to proliferate the usage of synthetic drugs through the backdoor gambling den of Vincent (Shiv Panditt). The scene then shifts to Guru (Sundeep Kishan), who struggles to make ends meet and run a library, at his mother's request, after his father's actions drown them all in misery and debt. Their worlds collide.

In a way, choosing to make his directorial debut with Sigma has both benefited and disadvantaged Jason. Debut films serve as a filmmaker's portfolio. The film proves Jason can stage big action sequences and handle multiple characters and their intentions. Take, for instance, the stunt scene in a multi-level parking area. But the big miss is that Sigma makes a weak case for the filmmaker's ability to write complex emotions. This, to a large extent, pulls down everything else Jason has achieved in the film. With none of the characters' emotional arcs resonating or evoking sympathy, their adventures don't make you feel invested.

Director: Jason Sanjay

Cast: Sundeep Kishan, Sampath Raj, Faria Abdullah, Raju Sundaram, Yog Japee, Shiv Panditt

Given that almost all the major characters lack something in life, and this money would more than suffice to bridge the gaps, there seems to be no interiority in any of them. The number of plot devices used to move the screenplay from one scene to another will be of no avail if there is no effort to make you buy the character's need. There seems to be palpable confusion in fixing the tonality of the film. It is surprising that a film already pulpy with bright, ticking explosives and a prized pen drive shies away from becoming more pulpy. Venkat Prabhu's Saroja is one of the finest examples of handling the "Bumblers vs Crime boss" trope in Tamil cinema because of the goofy eccentricities of its people and its self-awareness. Sigma, after a point, feels confused about whether it wants to be that or a serious, slow-motion-powered "HERO" film.  

At the start, the character introductions and the enormity of the plot feel like a flyweight boxer enrolling for a heavyweight bout, both for the filmmaker and some of the main actors. On the bright side, the characters and their ambitions, though sketched in broad strokes, don't get convoluted or hard to follow. The narration's linearity, given how many people are doing so much, is a win. However, performances and dialogues are insufferably shallow. What was also weak is the lack of explanation for how this bunch of nobodies gets access to what they need to face this supposed monster of a bad guy. You have a doctor and a voice artist on set. The natural expectation is that they'd use those skills during the heist. But nope. Also, some relationships in the film are under-explained, and others are over-explained. Similarly, the conveniece in writing gets a bit too on the nose. 

Sigma is a curious amalgamation of everything and nothing. You have a set of losers with different needs coming together to take on a powerful individual. The opportunities to go bonkers with the plot, using the heist party's professions and the different antagonists' agendas, were endless. But the film is a classic case of how ideas can only take a film so far. Sanjay can be cautiously praised for mounting a story, though with many loose ends, writing a lot of characters doing a lot of things, and maintaining a sort of linearity where one could meander. That said, he also needs to be told that good, enjoyable films can be made with mundane, simple things, and that he needs to slow down and observe.