Karthi Starrer Is Smart But Is Also Muddled With Multiple Miscalculated Messes/Misses!

Star Cast: Karthi, Raashi Khanna, Rajisha Vijayan, Chunky Pandey, Laila

Director: P. S. Mithran

What’s Good: Despite showing Karthi as a larger-than-life hero, this doesn’t do fan service to your face

What’s Bad: It misses the target of entertaining, making a mess in order to serve a multi-course meal on a single plate!

Loo Break: It’s 166-minutes long & has no power to stop you from taking a break, yes you’ll miss a lot but it won’t make you clueless about what’s going on

Watch or Not?: It misses the target of entertaining, making a mess in order to serve a multi-course meal on a single plate!

Language: Tamil

Available on: Theatrical Release

Runtime: 166 Minutes

User Rating:

It starts following the basic spy-thriller schtick of introducing the almighty lead agent telling you why he’s not as good as you think, but he eventually will be because how else to end such films? By labelling the super-spy Bose aka Sardar (Karthi) a ‘traitor’, the film jumps to the current day where his son Vijayprakash (also Karthi) is trying hard of being so entertaining to everyone that they should forget his father was a ‘gadaar’ agent back in the day.

Vijay somehow gets involved with the weird subplot of Chunky Panday‘s Rathore is fooling not only the country but also the entire world with his ‘One Nation One Pipeline’ scheme. With the help of his lawyer childhood crush Shalini (Raashii Khanna), Vijay uncovers truths about his life reuniting with his allegedly-rouge father Sardar ultimately getting a clearer picture of what went wrong.

Sardar Movie Review: Script Analysis

In one line, P. S. Mithran’s story boils down to an ‘adarsh’ son reuniting with his dad who he thought was dead (and rouge), only to have a ‘Maula Mere Le Le Meri Jaan’ Chak De! India’s moment in the end. Amid this ‘image-cleansing’ process of people’s cop, the narrative cojoins with social issues of ‘free’ water turning into a commodity denoting a darker side of capitalism.

I know, it looks all intriguing & intellectual on the outside, but on the inside, it’s muddled with multiple miscalculated messes/misses. Not a single sub-plot supports the strings of the plot, making it hang through a solo strand of Karthi’s performance which, spoiler alert, isn’t enough to attract your attention. Things get too convenient in disguise of ‘building’ the sub-plots like a kid giving away answers in an exchange for ice cream.

Ruben’s editing drags the already hindering narrative making it unbearable to sit through even interesting sequences like the pre-Interval block. He could’ve found a choppy way to pack in all the information without elongating everything. George C. Williams’ camerawork comes to life only in the action sequences, as apart from that he takes a very routine approach to film the already crawling scenes.

Sardar Movie Review: Star Performance

The many shades of Karthi don’t really come across as a diversified approach to taking a character. The only difference between Sardar & Vijayprakash is the aged look achieved through prosthetics, while the treatment remains tiredly similar for every avatar he takes up. While he shines in some scenes, that’s the least you’d accept from someone who’s at this stage of his career.

Raashi Khanna displays an artificial act, also not getting any considerable help from the weak character sketch. Chunky Pandey remains to be a miscast, especially because of how the poor dubbing doesn’t allow you to take him seriously at any juncture. Laila’s character which seems to be interesting at the start is also a victim of getting eclipsed by the heroic elements of the film.

Sardar Movie Review: Direction, Music

P. S. Mithran tries to mash up a spy-thriller layered with emotional drama & a touch of social issues like ‘don’t drink bottled water because it kills’, but ultimately makes ‘khichdi’ of everything which is definitely not palatable. It surely gives a very Vikram-isque vibe by its template but fails at more than one level in achieving even one-tenth of the same.

G. V. Prakash Kumar is that scholar kid in the class who never fails even if the entire class is performing poorly. He continues to drop bangers in the set pieces which aren’t optimally used by the makers, as the visuals don’t really match up to its swag.

Sardar Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, Karthi’s Sardar is one of those films which could’ve been a masterpiece only if things would’ve gone as planned.

Two stars!

Sardar Trailer

Sardar releases on 21 October, 2022.

Share with us your experience of watching Sardar.

For more recommendations, read our Vendhu Thanindhathu Kaadu Movie Review here.

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