Jigarthanda DoubleX movie review: Karthik Subbaraj’s ode to films is part meta cinema, part social commentary

Jigarthanda DoubleX takes a while to settle down. A hero-politician (Shine Tom Chacko), aspiring to become the next CM, is trying to take down his competition inside the party. He asks his brother Naveen Chandra, a DSP posted in a tribal village, to get rid of all the aides of his competition. One of them is Ceaser (Raghava Lawerence), a forimbable don in Madurai. An ardent fan of Clint Eastwood, Ceaser has a curious backstory about his name that involves the Hollywood star himself. He has a ritual of sorts while killing his enemies: he dresses up as a cowboy, gives his enemy a gun and organises a stand-off.

When he gets insulted at a party for being dark-skinned, Ceaser resolves to become the first black-skinned star in Tamil cinema. Rajinikanth is yet to make his debut as the film is set before Apoorva Ragangal (1975). Enters Ray Dasan (SJ Suryah), a prisoner who has been given the job of killing Ceaser. The catch is Ray is neither a filmmaker nor a killer. He is in fact allergic to blood. It gives him seizures. However, Ray has the gift of gab and makes Ceaser dance to his tune. Thus begins the ‘shooting’.

The storyline shares its core with its first part. Here too a filmmaker is trying to make a film about a gangster. Here too there is an unresolved family issue with the gangster that plays a huge role in the way the character has shaped up. But while watching Jigarthanda DoubleX, we care less about such connections as this film unfolds with a lot of drama.

Drama… something that’s been missing from our films lately. While mainstream cinema has come down to being a series of action set-pieces that are strung by some flimsy story and emotional quotient, Karthik revels in creating beautiful emotional moments that propel the action. There is a sly dig at our trend of cinema when Ray Dasan says, “No one watches films about good people anymore.” It is a dig at the film itself as much as it is about the current trend. It is just one example of the teeming self-referential and meta jokes in the film that are delicious. Karthik’s sly and wicked humour is subtle like everything about the film until it takes a social commentary route.

Now, Karthik Subbaraj has always been a filmmaker who has exhibited concern for the environment. His silent film Mercury is a case in point. Even during his short film days, the director has been toying with the issues of Sri Lanka. Yet, it is rather bold of him to use the Jigarathanda universe, for making a social commentary. It ends up working because of two incredible performances, which are of course of SJ Suryah and Raghava Lawrence. In a way, the film is about finding its hero between the two, and the end is poetic, to say the least. Karthik Subbaraj undermines the concept of a hero even as he creates one with the two marvellous actors.

The prequel tries to be a lot of things at once. However, it succeeds as meta cinema. Take the build-up to the interval, for example, Ceaser and Ray are struggling to find an interval to their film. Meta enough? Ceaser keeps teasing that a terrific interval block is on the horizon, but things end up becoming a damp squib. And when the interval block finally hits, it is bonkers. The interval frame is perhaps one of the brilliant cinematic moments in Tamil cinema. Such brilliance outshines the shortcomings of Jigarthanda DoubleX.