Kalaga Thalaivan Movie Review

Filmmaker Magizh Thirumeni (Thadam, Thadayara Kaaka, Meagamann fame) collaborates with Udhayanidhi Stalin for ‘Kalaga Thalaivan’, a movie based on financial crime. Nidhi Agarwal plays the female lead and Bigg Boss fame Aarav appears as the antagonist.

The movie opens with a country’s leading automobile firm announcing its launch of a new truck that offers mileage beyond usual limits with less fuel. The story then shifts to Chennai, where we find the protagonist (Udhayanidhi Stalin), a smart geek with a mysterious shade. With a bunch of company secrets getting leaked, the firm’s Founder hires an ex-commando (Aarav) to crack the mystery and unravel the culprit in a short span of time.

What’s the actual secret that the protagonist carries? Is he a spy? What’s his intention and role in this process?

Director Magizh Thirumeni has always handled his scripts with a gripping narrative. He always sticks to the premise and doesn’t divert his plots anywhere into the unwanted zones. Even the romance in his movies is mature, cute, and captivating. However, the same element becomes a barricade, when his scripts are too intense. Say, for instance, the romance portions work well in Thadayara Thakka and Thadam. Whereas, Meagamann which had an intense story didn’t go well with romantic portions. The same happens here with Kalaga Thalaivan, where the entire romance episodes between Udhayanidhi and Nidhi Agarwal don’t contribute in any way, except for the climax link, which takes a routine commercial potboiler route.

Getting on with the positives, the premise itself is gripping and unique. So far, we haven’t come across a story involving financial crime and whistleblowers. Director MT deserves special mention for his attempts to craft a story based on this. The first hour looks intriguing as the intensity keeps building scene by scene, thereby letting audiences excited about what’s next. However, the second hour takes a routine commercial potboiler genre, with the villain repeating the same acts of torturing everyone, which starts boring after a certain extent.

Let it be a spy or whistleblower, there needs to be a process that elevates or intensifies the nature of the protagonist. In KT, we don’t find any such sequences, except the pre-interval block in a railway station, which deserves tons of appreciation. If there were 4-5 scenes of this paradigm, the film would have been more gripping.

Udhayanidhi Stalin has very minimal scope to perform in this movie. But we need to appreciate his efforts of being inclined to the unique scripts rather than choosing commercial Rom-Coms as in the earlier stages of his career. Nidhi Agarwal has nothing to do with the main plot. Aarav is terrific, and he will be one of the most fascinating villains in Tamil cinema in the coming years. The other actors have very little to get noticed.

The camera works by Dhillraj with a unique tone is okay, but the shakiness starts distracting us after a certain extent. The background score by Srikanth Deva is tremendous. It’s great to see his comeback with promising work.

On whole, Kalaga Thalaivan has an interesting plot and an engrossing first hour. But a predictable and clichéd second half, especially the climax hampers its impact.