‘Sabapathy’ movie review: Santhanam’s latest has an exciting plot but is let down by tepid writing

What Sivakarthikeyan did in Doctor is what Santhanam attempts in Sabapathy… only, the writing ought to have been stronger

R Srinivasa Rao’s Sabapathy reminded me of Mr. Denton on Doomsday, an episode from Rod Serling’s cult classic TV series, The Twilight Zone. In the latter, fate, personified as a strange salesman, saves a former gunslinger’s life from chronic alcoholism and a fatally dangerous duel by giving him a gun and a tiny bottle of magical potion. Fate, which is usually blamed by humans for their misfortunes, lends a helping hand to a fallen man.

In Sabapathy, too, fate is personified. Fate in this film is a VFX creation — a guy with a longish beard and a baritone voice who sits in a dimly lit room and does strange things like reversing the collapse of a card castle. He, like the salesman in The Twilight Zone episode, intervenes in the life of the struggling and stammering Sabapathy (Santhanam) to make it better.

However, unlike The Twilight Zone episode, which readily evokes philosophical contemplation (as most The Twilight Zone episodes do), Sabapathy, due to its ineffectual screenplay, leaves you with that feeling of showering in lukewarm water on a wet, cold morning. If only the water had been warmer. Because the plot of Sabapathy, although not entirely novel, is solid: a naive nice guy, struggling in life, gets a suitcase full of cash belonging to a corrupt politician. This is the point where Fate decides to intervene in his life. But the build-up to this point and its aftermath are tiresome.