‘Rathnam’ movie review: Hari attempts to reinvent himself but the Vishal-starrer remains outdated

In his latest outing with Vishal, Hari attempts to adapt some of his tropes to the sensibilities of the modern-day audience, but the ideas he plays around with and the story he wishes to tell still belong in the 2000s

Tamil masala movie-making has evolved so much that even the idea of watching a Hari film like Rathnam in 2024 seems fascinating. Here’s a filmmaker who refuses to let go of his signature style, or tweak his signature tropes beyond a point, when there’s hardly any contemporary attempting anything similar. And call it a bargain for developing a style, it’s easy for aesthetic details to cloud over why those tropes came to be in the first place. In Hari’s case, he’s a filmmaker who strives to make an engaging masala action film, and in a career spanning over two decades, he’s yet to make a boring film; even a disaster like Saamy Square ironically engages you with how bizarre it can get.

Unfortunately in Rathnam, even when Hari is visibly giving his all to make a captivating actioner to re-introduce his style, only the intrigue in how he plays up his tropes this time hooks you up more than the film itself. And while some self-awareness leads to him adapting some of his tropes to the sensibilities of the modern-day audience, the ideas he plays around with still belong in the 2000s.

The very story that the film chooses to tell seems archaic. In a town bordering Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, a rowdy named Panneerselvam (Samuthirakani) raises a young teen named Rathnam as his own after the latter saves his life from his enemy. In the present day, when Panneer becomes an MLA, he chooses the now grown-up Rathnam — Vishal as the quintessential sickle-wielding Hari hero — as his go-to man. Things take a turn when Rathnam saves a young woman named Mallika (Priya Bhavani Shankar), an aspiring medical college student, from a gang of rowdies from Andhra. We soon realize that Mallika’s father Vedha Nayagam (Jayaprakash) is embroiled in trouble as the nefarious land-grabbing moguls — Rayudu brothers; Beema Rayudu (Murali Sharma), Subba Rayudu (Hareesh Peradi) and Ragava Rayudu (Muthu Kumar) — are after his land.

Now, why does Rathnam go to such great lengths for a stranger? At a time when a viewer might have even forgotten the period when films repeatedly used the idea of a doppelganger to serve up a twist, Hari shocks you. This is despite all the criticisms Saamy Square received for a similar doppelganger idea. It’s an idea that’s so absurd to think about, surely, but the situation in which it gets played out is such that you almost start giving in to what he attempts to do with it.

This is what I meant by the peculiarity in how Hari chooses to tweak some of his tropes but chooses to continue most others. Unlike any Hari film, the hero gets a sober introduction shot, but it is followed by the typical fight sequence to show his machoness. There are five blood-curdling action sequences — in addition to the barrage of violent action films we have been getting — but this is also a film with an opening song in a bar. The heroine plays a crucial role in the plot (like in Thaamirabharani or Venghai), and she once again falls for the hero for a bizarre reason. But for all that importance given in the plot, she becomes quite a unidimensional puppet to the hero.

Hari likes to send cars up in the air and we once again get a car chase sequence, but this time it is a 5-minute single-shot sequence — you do not get the desired effect, but who thought of Hari opting for such a technique? Remember Vikram removing his sacred thread upon realizing his real caste identity in Saamy Square? We get something similar here, only to serve up a baffling pay-off moment in a frustrating climax sequence.

And yet, as you watch the film turn into a silly, hastily put-together product, you end up wishing it was at least just another Hari from the 2000s. For instance, most of his films flesh out a strong subplot with a parent-like figure’s complicated equation with the hero; this worked even for Vishal in his previous outings with Hari, Thaamirabharani and Poojai. In Rathnam, the equation between Panneerselvam and Rathnam hardly gets explored, and instead, we get the done-to-dust “amma sentiment.”