It’s not by accident that the one lasting memory from Por Thozhil (2023), remains the tense interrogation scene in which Sarathkumar’s character questions Sarath Babu as they wait for a train to pass at a railway crossing. After the film sets up its characters, director Vignesh Raja slows down time to a nerve-wracking degree to give us a sequence in which every pause is pregnant with layers and undercurrents, as an officer interrogates the man he suspects could be a serial killer…all of this to the menacing visuals of a red traffic light flashing right at you.
The interval sequence in Dhanush’s Kara goes a step further to create a sequence that has even more at stake. The detailing is even more specific and a reaction shot of Dhanush’s face is framed through the holster of a police officer’s pistol. The sequence is written like it’s a visual demonstration of Murphy’s Law with everything going wrong, all at once. Yet despite the setbacks when we witness Kara (Dhanush), leave the bank with a bag full of cash, Theni Eswar’s camera holds the shot to show us a tractor speeding past him.
In any other movie, this tractor may be interpreted as effective production design and nothing more. But in a film set in the 90s, back when banks sold the tractor as a modern dream to ill-equipped farmers, the tractor passing by is something of a cool insert, as though it’s power moving back to where it belongs. The first half of Kara involves several brilliant decisions like these, both in terms of the writing as well as its making. In a film about a thief who is constantly at war with morality, the first interaction between Kara and Selli (played by Mamitha Baiju) is one in which Kara is literally hung upside down, a symbol of their opposing moral values. Even in sequences set in daytime, Theni Eswar’s camera insists that a shadow be cast over Kara, again to reaffirm his confusing moral position.
When we speak about the writing, the film takes a bold step to think beyond the cliches of a cat-and-mouse game with a cop, hot on the heels of a sly thief. With the added layer of a corrupt bank official played by Jayaram, Kara feels like a three-way contest with each of these characters being as grey as the last. The morality angle is pitched even higher, especially with Kara being some sort of a devotee. Including in the opening sequence, which resembles the iconic training scene from Pudhupettai, we see Kara looking at each heist as something of a divine operation, one that requires a lot of luck and just as many higher interventions.
With so much going for it through most of its runtime, one wonders why Kara then settles for so little as it progresses into the last act. It’s as though the film decides to forego its sophisticated writing choices to settle for safety. Clever symbols that represented Kara’s complex moral layer, steps aside and the film begins to shout out its virtues rather than whispering them. Perhaps the film didn’t want to go too far with Dhanush’s character and chose to play him out like another Robin Hood iteration, as though he’s here to steal from the rich and give to the poor.
The whitewashing of his character becomes too obvious after a point, especially when the film takes a giant pause to underline the suffering of an older farmer, played by MS Bhaskar. From this point on, the film rewrites Jayaram’s character to be somewhat of a tiringly uni-dimensional bad guy, without motivations. The film also fails to play up the police officer character who seems to be stuck between what appears to a white-collar criminal and the even smarter blue-collar criminal. The promise of the film begins to feel diluted and the incredible first half feels like it deserved a more daring culmination. A movie that began as a complex tale of morality, ended being happy to be called a message movie.