‘Kara’ movie review: Same drama in natty wrapping

The apparent trend in cinema now is to package films with new, natty elements that are presumably for marketing rather than for any artistic value. The changes, if you will, are evident in the plot setting, the music, the complexity of the plot’s consequences, and the redemption arc that revolves around it. But, at the end of the day, they all seem to be manufactured the same way as before.

‘Kara’ is set in Ramanathapuram in 1991, where the Gulf War has dried up the fuel pumps, and the banks are quietly eating up the farmers’ ancestral lands. Dhanush, a manifestation of the consequences of the situation, is a former thief who has seemingly changed his ways.

The journey of the ‘anti-hero-hero’ begins. Although there has been a ‘better now than later’ shift away from the theatrical grand entries of lead actors, this change does little for the film’s formal or narrative freshness. The long duration of the film does well to add tension and sustain it, but it lacks substance.

Following the establishment of the characters, act, and plot in the first half, the second half suffers from predictability. Other than the duration and the plot setting, the film, when seen in its totality, fails to deliver what it establishes and falls back on the age-old melodrama trick.