Veera Dheera Sooran, Black Bag, Follower: Reviews This Week

Veera Dheera Sooran: Part 2 Marks The Return Of The Vikram Everyone Loves

In Veera Dheera Sooran: Part 2 , Vikram makes time stand still. One can also see the film as a continuation of the works he greenlit in the 2000s — rich in love, action and sentiment, but most importantly, defined by its elusive hero. Subha J Rao reviews.

Dir: CU Arun Kumar

Cast: Vikram, Dushara Vijayan, Suraj Venjaramudu, SJ Suryah

Playing in: Theatres

FOR THOSE who, in the flush of their youth in the early 2000s, in Tamil Nadu, life was coloured by many movies starring Vikram , but most notably Dhill (2001), Gemini (2002), Dhool (2003) and Saamy (2003). He had many hits post those too, but they all demanded so much of him physically — he gained weight, he lost weight, prosthetics were called in — we rarely got to see the performer in him shine without a crutch. We hardly got to see his shy smile or just be part of the universe created by a director, without drawing any attention to himself. Thaandavam (2012) and Mahaan (2022) were rare exceptions.

The audience had to wait till 2025 to see vintage Vikram or the people’s much-loved Chiyaan back on the big screen. As Kaali in SU Arun Kumar ’s Veera Dheera Sooran: Part 2 , Vikram makes time stand still, and you can also see the film as a continuation of the works he greenlit in the 2000s. There’s action - yes, there’s love - yes, there’s sentiment - yes, but there’s also that lovely thing missing in most films — a hero who is part of the ambience, a hero who prefers lurking in the shadows, a hero who shies away from the spotlight. Cinematographer Theni Eswar lights and frames these dark spaces beautifully, considering most of the film takes place at night.

But, what director Arun manages, most of all, is to put Vikram back in a space that has always been his — the hero with a conscience who will always keep up his word, for whom family matters, but someone who also knows how to be playful. This was a space that lay vacant for Vikram.

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Black Bag: A Love Story By Steven Soderbergh

In Soderbergh's London-set spy thriller, the very concept of espionage becomes a parable for the devaluation of trust in modern-day relationships, writes Rahul Desai .

Dir: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender

Playing in: Theatres

SOME OF THE SEXIEST THRILLERS aren’t about the plot. They invite the viewer to slice through a perfectly sculpted body—not murderously, of course—and try to find a tiny, beating heart within. The sleekness of the body matters. And perhaps no contemporary filmmaker encourages such surgical eroticism more than Steven Soderbergh. His movies are so wildly watchable — even when they’re not great — because the style itself is the substance. Black Bag is perhaps his most complete work in a decade; it’s a London-set spy thriller where the very concept of espionage becomes a parable for the devaluation of trust in modern-day relationships. Soderbergh and writer David Koepp don’t come at it from a nostalgic back-in-our-day space. If anything, they fetishise what it takes to keep a tradition alive in an institution that’s rigged against the anatomy of faith.

The framework is clever. The film revolves around a cold-blooded British intelligence agent, George (Michael Fassbender), who must investigate a top-secret leak and find the traitor among his colleagues. The details are not important; let’s just say there’s the standard threat of a nuclear meltdown and dissolved governments. One of the five suspects, however, is Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), his wife and fellow intelligence agent. George and Kathryn are kind of an urban legend in the spy world — not because they’re excellent at what they do, but because they’re married and intensely committed to each other in a vocation that requires duplicity, role-play and moral ambiguity. They’re a social anomaly, so much so that a dinner invite to their home feels like a “visit to our parents”. It’s a marriage so solid that when George goes up to Kathryn’s floor, everyone in her meeting (including her superior) automatically pauses — you can almost hear the mental eye-rolls in the room. They’re used to it.

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Follower Is An Urgent Film About Political Compliance

Harshad Nalawade's debut film tracks the senseless way social media trolls operate, fuelled by the misguided notion that unquestionable obedience is their greatest calling. Follower is about followers. Ishita Sengupta reviews.

Dir: Harshad Nalawade

Cast: Raghu Basarimarad, Harshad Nalawade, Donna Munshi

Playing in: Theatres

AN ANGRY MOB vandalises a public space. The premise is ransacked, chairs are upturned, and threats are issued: “Every action has a reaction”. They are seething over a remark made by a comedian about their political leader, standing in that place. Soon, social media is crammed with more threats and conspiracy theories, each linking the said comedian to extremists and sources of his funding to illegal sponsorship; he is tipped to be the unofficial spokesperson of the rival party. As days pass, speculations get rife; one party worker comes to a news channel and says he regrets nothing. “There should be a limit to humour”. Harshad Nalawade's Follower is about that person.

This might be technically misleading, but it is spiritually accurate. Nalawade’s astute and timely film is about the faceless trolls that appear to self-multiply and clog every pore of social media. His debut film tracks the senseless way they operate, fuelled by the misguided notion that unquestionable obedience is their greatest calling. Follower is about followers.

Follower is also about one follower: Raghavendra Pawar (Raghu Basarimarad), a resident of Belagavi, the contentious Marathi-majority district in Karnataka. Raghavendra, or Raghu as he is known to his friends, belongs to the dominant community but feels cornered. He is convinced that the city belonged to them in the past (situated at the border, Belagavi, has been part of Karnataka since states were restructured along linguistic lines under the States Reorganisation Act, 1956) and their fight for supremacy is only legitimate. To do his bit, Raghu works at some kind of IT cell where he, along with a few other men, post altered media and news to clamour support for their local Marathi leader. Instigated by one such video, a group of people kill Sachin (essayed by Nalawade himself), a Kannadiga YouTuber who was dispelling misinformation spread by the Marathi politician; soon Raghu is detained by cops.

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