| Cast: | Kayadu Lohar, Pradeep Ranganathan, Anupama Parameswaran |
| Director: | Ashwath Marimuthu |
| Genre: | Romance/Comedy |
| Duration: | 2h 37m |
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When Raghavan has 48 arrears to clear, he decides to take a shortcut to success. It takes him far, but doesn’t last long. Will he find a way back, or is a second chance just around the corner?
If one is good only because of the fear of repercussions, are they really good people? If one is disillusioned with the idea of being perfect, wants to live life on the fly, make mistakes and amends along the way, are they really bad people? Now, with most questions regarding the existential crisis of being a good person in a seemingly bad world, these also don’t have concrete answers. Director Ashwath Marimuthu attempts to tell a story of a guy who descends into the depths of depravity only to find the shortest of ropes to hold on and crawl back to redemption. A guy named D Ragavan aka Dragon.
Dragan(Pradeep Ranganath) is a college dropout who failed in 48 subjects. This is also the time when his girlfriend Keethy(Anupama Parameswaran) ditches him for good. To take revenge, he uses fake certificates and gets into a higher position. Just when is about to settle down in life with another girl(Kayadu Lohar), his principal comes back into the scene and challenges him to get to college and finish his studies failing which he would expose him and his career. Left with no choice, Dragon enters college again, and whether he succeeds in life and completes his studies, is the basic story of the film.
This doesn’t mean Ashwath never indulges in cinematic highs. A scene that should be registered in the books of ‘mass’ moments in cinema, Dragon’s so-called ardent junior follower, named ‘Kutty’ Dragon (Harshath Khan), is asked to narrate an algorithm for him to study while he bashes up some goons.
Another classic trick is to make a cigarette stub create an inciting incident that would go on to change the entire course of his life. An interesting cameo with a Midas touch reminds you of Oh My Kadavule and makes you question the magic of its timing. But these don’t overshadow the film or make it larger than life than necessary, making you suspend disbelief about his motives.
Pradeep appears even more confident in Dragon than in Love Today, and it’s intriguing since the character he plays is nothing like the actor-director whose story we are now familiar with. Ashwath paints a repulsive but amusing image of his flawed protagonist, D Ragavan, who mooches off his employed friends and unabashedly lies to his parents about his employment. When his current girlfriend Keerthi (Anupama Parameswaran) breaks up with him for his debauched, shiftless existence, Ragavan instinctively attempts to choke her — this is a boy conditioned to believe that this is acceptable behaviour.
There’s something so raw and likeable about actor-director Pradeep Ranganathan that you can immediately accept his make-believe as an impressionable Tamil middle-class youth. With Love Today, where he directed himself, Pradeep made a moving impression on the zeitgeist as a familiar boy-next-door, with all his flaws, ticks, beliefs and charm. With director Ashwath Marimuthu’s Dragon, whose story Pradeep has written, it’s clear that the actor wishes to play to his strengths. Written with flair — and with the right amount of commercial cinema elements — Dragon might just about elevate Pradeep as the ‘Tamil Jesus’ of the middle-class youth, who is torn between almost accessible dreams and a stark reality ready to slam the doors shut.
Raghavan finds an amazing friend and lover in Keerthi (Anupama Parameswaran), who goes out of her way to keep him happy. But Dragon highlights that sometimes a missed chance is a missed chance. From the rainy nights hinting at a change to second chances and college friendships, both frames and characters remind you of the director’s debut outing, which works organically for his sophomore venture. Even the famous “Idhu ungallukku sonna puriyaadhu sir” dialogue makes a cameo. Apart from these, you also get hat tips to Premam, Simbu, and other films and actors, adding flavour to the comedy sequences. From roping in VJ Siddhu and Harshath Khan to all the interesting meta references, Ashwath has managed to cater to the youth in all possible ways. Speaking about such references, the film’s other big strength is the small but emotionally loaded dialogues — for example, “Oru thappu panitu easy ah kadantharlaam nu nenaikurom, but adhu thoratite iruku la” — that are written with care.
Pradeep Ranganathan as Raghavan aka Dragon makes you empathise with him even as he repeatedly makes wrong choices. Anupama as Keerthi too is as expressive as always. Behind all the jokes and silliness the film paints the situations with, there is something deeper to look at. Do we regret our decisions? What if we go back to a place we didn’t want to be in the first place? Would we live a changed life? And a lot more questions that make the central plot firm and nuanced. The songs and the way they are woven into the narrative is also a great plus to the film.
