Retro (Tamil)
Parivel (Suriya) is a man who never smiles. He hasn’t laughed a day since a traumatic event as a child. “Medically” (you can’t hear the sarcasm in my head), it’s apparently “impossible” for him to, which gives Suriya a good reason to smoulder impressively for the whole run time. Be thankful for that because there’s not much else to impress in Retro.
This is not a digression: Director Karthik Subbaraj wants to make absurdly funny and irreverent films with star actors. Props to him for trying. But the problem is, he was already good at such films, minus the mega star power, with the likes of his debut Pizza (2012) or the Bobby Simha-Siddharth starrer Jigarthanda (2014). Then Petta (2019) happened, with Rajinikanth in the lead. After that came Jagame Thanthiram (2021) with Dhanush and Mahaan (2022) with Vikram. Inevitably, they were all at odds with the director’s own style and formulaic Kollywood boxes that need ticking for the heroes’ fan bases.
These characters, however irascible, are never allowed to cross the line into having an actual personality on screen. Which is why Retro’s Parivel cannot be on par with Jigarthanda’s Assault Sethu (Bobby Simha), for example.
Parivel, or Pari, roars and struts and kills at his adoptive father‘s (Joju George) whims. Karthik almost exclusively makes gangster flicks, remember? Then he finds love—Rukumani, a Buddhist woman (Pooja Hegde in brown face). Rukumani, a great believer in non-violence, goes into a huff every time Pari picks up a weapon, but is entirely oblivious to structural violence, like feudalism, happening two feet away from her. This in itself should not be surprising. Tamil cinema has possibly taken a secret vow never to write women characters with more sense than a confused duckling.
Rukumani, citing her faith, refuses to be with Pari unless he gives up his gangster ways. Pari now has to make some hard choices. Those choices involve a wedding, jail and the Andamans, in that order.
At this point, the film has already collapsed into a bewilderingly poor depiction of the Buddha’s dhamma pitted against upper caste notions of violently lethal divine retribution delivered on earth by Pari. This is in fact, the crux of the film. Should Pari follow Buddhist values as comprehended by Karthik or become an avenging god-like figure himself?
Also, there are some jokes.
Far too few of these jokes land for a film whose tagline is ‘Love, Laughter, War’. If it’s not possible to chuckle with Jayaram in the film, the joke’s on us for buying a ticket. There are a few moments between Suriya and Joju that do, however, have you fondly recalling Karthik’s ability for comic timing.
Retro has roped in other veteran actors too. There’s Nassar mumbling semi-coherently as an aged, cartoonishly evil king. Prakash Raj plays a north Indian politician named Dharmendra. And the film’s music director, the hugely popular Santhosh Narayanan, is in a blink-and-will-make-no-difference cameo.
All these talents are wasted as just flimsy props for Suriya to rise into his mandatory saviour mode.
Santhosh’s ‘Kanimaa’ is at least catchy, but like the rest of the songs, it lacks the strength and elegance of his music for films like Karnan (2021) or Vada Chennai (2018). Or the infectious quirkiness of the tracks in Jagame Thanthiram.
Karthik tries some tricky camera work like several single-take sequences, but it’s too much to process alongside the general chaos of Retro’s plot.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.