Sulthan Film Evaluation: The Mahabharata meets Seven Samurai in Sulthan, a solidly written, immensely satisfying masala film. The parable-building begins within the very first scene, a prologue through which we witness the beginning of Sulthan (Karthi, compelling). There’s point out of an Abhimanyu-like youngster imbibing its mom’s want to flip her husband Sethupathi (Napoleon, including gravitas to an prolonged cameo of a job), a feared gangster, and his innumerable henchmen to the appropriate path. This still-in-the-womb child saves everybody from an assassination try. When it’s born, it’s handed over to a foster father – Mansoor Bhai (performed warmly by Lal) – amidst a downpour. And when this youngster turns into a person, we get the one-line pitch of the story by means of a dialogue – what if Krishna had stood with the Kouravas within the Mahabharata, and tries to reform them?
In parallel, we see the establishing of a basic masala film trope. A couple of farmers search the companies of those rowdies to guard them from an evil gangster (Ram, of KGF fame), who’s after their land. Bakkiyaraj Kannan brings these two plot traces collectively in a sensible approach and units the tone for the remainder of the movie, which, in contrast to his debut movie, Remo, banks on writing slightly than star energy.
The writing retains hooked regardless of the story’s arcs being acquainted. Each sub-plot helps to take the narrative ahead. Take the romantic monitor between Sulthan and Rukmani (Rashmika Mandanna, who makes a captivating debut). Along with lightening the temper and appearing as a aid between the heavier scenes, it additionally provides the explanation for Sulthan and his ‘annans’ to remain within the village that they’ve come to guard. And it repeatedly builds up the parable across the hero, not simply as a software to glorify its star, however to determine the character as a saviour. Whereas Sulthan is perhaps Krishna to his gangster brothers, he’s Karuppan, the guardian deity, to the villagers. The mythology extends to the props as properly. The weapons that Sulthan has to weild throughout his mission embrace a whip, a mace and an axe. He’s Krishna, Bheema and Balarama all rolled into one.
It’s only with the antagonist that this in any other case excellent entertainer feels underwhelming. Fairly than one highly effective villain, we get three, and all three characters aren’t developed satisfyingly. Whereas KGF Ram’s Jayaseelan does not come throughout as a risk after the efficient interval motion block, the foremost villain within the second half – clichéd run-of-the-mill company villain, performed by yet one more ineffective North Indian actor – seems to be a disappointment proper from the second he seems on display. And the third one, an formidable gangster (Arjai) amongst Sulthan’s brothers, comes throughout as essentially the most attention-grabbing, however the director appears to have been eager to make all his Kouravas likeable – they’re offered not as cold-blooded criminals however solely as moral rowdies – that he solely takes half-stabs at establishing this character’s motives.
Whereas this does rob the movie of being a punchy motion film, it does not cease it from being a likeable entertainer.