Dragon (Tamil)
Ashwath Marimuthu’s Dragon is a mostly frivolous outing that tries to stay within the ‘message padam’ (movies with ‘moral’ lessons) ambit of Kollywood. Most of the jokes land. You are kept entertained. The film is rife with cameos and call backs to popular Tamil movies. And it was a pleasant surprise that its lead Pradeep Ranganathan of Love Today (2022) fame, while still playing a similarly average, toxic male protagonist, at least has a marginally better character arc this time.
Pradeep stars as ‘Dragon’ or Raghavan Dhanapal. He has 48 Engineering arrears, financially exploits his friends, girlfriend, and parents alike. And then, he commits fraud to land a high paying job just to get back at his girlfriend Keerthi (Anupama Parameswaran) for breaking up. His nickname comes from his college days of terrorising professors and cutting class. The film opens with us being told Raghavan is a terrible student in college only because his school love interest prefers ‘bad boys’.
Raghavan’s reckoning finally comes and most of the film is about how he goes about dealing with it, in a belaboured manner, with enough moments set aside for misogynistic dialogues and regressive ‘mass scenes’. It’s hard to fault the industry alone when that’s exactly what seems to draw audience cheers, while Raghavan’s paltry accountability to the women he hurts is met with ringing silence.
Pradeep seems to be leaning into his almost uncanny physical resemblance to Dhanush. This resemblance became a talking point during Love Today’s wave of (sexist) popularity. His mannerisms, body language, joke delivery all do recall a younger Dhanush, but is nevertheless entertaining. While Pradeep certainly doesn’t have Dhanush’s emotional range and ability to bring out nuanced portrayals, he does justice to the highs and lows of his character. Especially the lows. Raghavan’s most unscrupulous moments are when Pradeep’s comic timing works best.
Dragon also stars VJ Sidhu and Harshath Khan—the hugely popular stars of VJ Sidhu Vlogs. Sidhu brings the one-liner and slap stick comedy he is known for to his character of Anbu, Dragon’s long suffering friend. Harshath as ‘Kutty’ Dragon, Raghavan’s college junior, provides an absurd counter-point to the protagonist.
Cameo appearances from actors Mysskin, and Sneha, director KS Ravikumar and even Ashwath himself are cleverly placed to push the story along, rather than use their appearances just for a few mass moments. One of these cameos is even carefully wielded to set up an interesting interval block.
Leon James’ songs are mostly memorable for the fame of their various singers. Silambarasan drones on in ‘Yein di Vittu Ponna’– a fittingly sexist track for the actor.
Music director Anirudh has sung the hero’s track ‘Rise of Dragon’ and Sid Sriram is credited with performing ‘Vazhithunaiye’. It’s only Gana Apellow’s ‘Maatikkinaaru Orutharu’ that blends easily with the events in the film.
Dragon will ultimately be described as a ‘coming of age’ film—a term now readily applied in Kollywood to stories with male protagonists who are basically just terrible people, but are raised up as martyrs simply for belatedly trying to make amends. If anyone tells you that Raghavan’s misogyny is called out in the film, ask them who the closing cameo appearance is.
