It’s possible that the first thing you feel after walking out of Baththa, besides a strange sense of wonder, is a deep appreciation for its deceiving but ingenious promotional material. The Balaji Tharaneetharan film revolves around the titular Baththa (Vijay Sethupathi), a boisterous gangster living it up in a Madras of the 80s — breaking limbs, bootlegging arrack, threatening to kill anything that moves at any given occasion, you know the type. This was made crystal clear through some of the teasers. Baththa still does revolve around this exaggerated gangster archetype, which we've come to witness increasingly in various Tamil films. But what the film goes on to become is something that you possibly never see coming. It's a genre shift that ends up becoming the film's biggest gift.
Baththa is filled with rich characters and richer performances fill Baththa. In a film that is essentially a gradual but seismic undoing of a gangster, we also get an enriching human drama that surprises and inspires in equal measure. Baththa, which follows Karthik Subbaraj's Dorothy in theatres, is the second Tamil film this year to shine a soft light on patriarchy and masculinity. It's difficult to shake off what the film questions. For one, the entire film, and by extension Baththa’s life, unfolds through the eyes of a sparkling ten-year-old boy.
Sabari (Sai) is a young boy who is surrounded by stories of Baththa’s exploits wherever he goes. Some real (“Baththa will thrash anyone who challenges him”), and some…delightfully made up (“Someone found Baththa and his pet lion out on the streets taking a piss at the electric pole”). But Sabari is also at an age when he struggles to separate reality from exaggeration, human frailty from bloated ego.
These make up the film's most interesting parts and, eventually, its primary conflict. What will Sabari, a boy who is deathly scared of the local goon, make of a situation where he has to go head-to-head with him? More importantly, what happens to the dangerous image of the goon he has built in his head? Like a slightly less terrifying Jack Torrance trapped in a hilarious netherworld, Baththa finds himself trying to pry open a restroom he is magically locked in. When the city’s biggest goon finds himself helpless, angry and infinitely restless, stuck in the local school’s lavatory, the film shifts gears and suddenly turns into a delicate human drama you wouldn’t see coming.
Not only is his undoing gradual, but it is deeply satisfying. Watching Vijay Sethupathi devour the role of a gargantuan man, who is slowly but steadily reduced to a small, gentle giant, is an absolute treat. The vulnerability that Sethupathi is often admired for is on unabashed display in the precious final act, which oddly makes you think of the film as a unique companion piece to unlikely friendship dramas such as Meiyazhagan (2024), made by Tharaneetharan’s friend and peer Prem Kumar.
Giving Sethupathi a run for his money — quite literally and metaphorically— is Sai Prithvi, who dazzles and jerks tears out of us any time he’s on screen. His wide eyes, flickering between anxiety and warmth, is an endearing fixture here. Much of what the film wants to say about masculinity is seen through the men that surround this boy. Sure, he is impulsive, like any kid his age usually is, but he is also empathetic, a quality the film writes not as a narrative afterthought, but embeds deep into its writing as the shining anchor that leads the script. We see it in the diligence with which he comes back to school to retrieve his confiscated toy, but not before gently shutting all doors of his teacher’s cabinet. We see it in the way he thinks of a stranger’s hunger when he’s eating his own dinner. And in his acts of heart-stopping kindness that weirdly saves someone’s life.
But these aren’t just written into the script to engineer or wring an emotional response from you. When you see the young boy act out of kindness, Tharaneetharan also makes sure to show you a few scenes of his meek but righteous father, who clearly leads the way. Baththa is also a riot when it wants to be. There's a neat little Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom (Tharaneetharan's 2012 debut, which also became Sethupathi's breakout role) reference taped in there somewhere, and when you do spot it, you'll laugh out loud.
Lijomol Jose is a superb addition to the film as Kanima, a wife who struggles; sometimes through silent sobs and sometimes through angry slaps, she boldly gives back. But the film’s most inviting quality is how carefully it brings everything full circle. Small elements like the tea kadai rusk, a hastily scribbled piece of note, a toy, a song never sung, and even a cute little safari suit come back to remind us of their place in the rewarding film.