With its lead character (Vikram) named ‘Gandhi Mahaan’, the film opens with a Mahatma Gandhi quote pointing towards the freedom to make mistakes. Ironically, the project seems to be the same (a mistake), wherein Karthik Subbaraj (the director) simply repeats an over-exploited plot of a simpleton turning into a gangster, followed by an unconvincing twist in the end.
Attempted as an epic creation, Mahaan begins with a black and white flashback introducing a group of kids gambling and fighting with each other. It gradually moves further, spanning decades from the late ‘60s to the new millennium, but takes too much time in the build-up, almost the entire first half. The familiar story progression finally finds its grip in the concluding hour, but that too gets marred by a prolonged over-the-top climax.
Apart from a stale plot, the biggest problem in Mahaan is the over-elaboration of events that becomes tiresome after a while, lacking the desired novelty. It also doesn’t work as the major twists remain unconvincing, like the transformation of a common man (in his 40s) just after one night of outing, with no looking back. Besides, neither the Gandhian ideology comes up as a hard-hitting inclusion in the storyline nor the emotions reach that height, forcing you to feel for the characters.
Trying too many things in its last hour, Mahaan is an ambitious attempt, largely stressing upon a weirdly written character of Dhruv and the sudden father-son rivalry. Vikram keeps trying hard in the entire film giving an effective performance and Dhruv plays it quite loud. But the winner among all remains Bobby Simhaa (Sathyavan), as Vikram’s partner in crime. Simran enacts well along with Sananth, Muthukumar, and the rest of the cast with nothing excelling as it should in the lengthy 160 minutes duration.
Despite interesting camerawork, innovatively designed (one-shot) action sequences, and a heavy background score, Mahaan somehow remains floating at the surface, missing the expected visual flair. The narration also gets lost in too many ideas thrown at us, like the symbolic names as Gandhi Mahaan and Dadabhai Naoroji, references of ‘freedom-fighters’, movements against liquor production and inter-cuts of graphical playing cards in between the crucial scenes. With so much happening on the screen, it turns out to be a high-on-concept film, with nothing new to deliver, satisfying the excited audience.
Overall, it certainly needs some courage to go through this self-indulgent, repetitive creation, falling way short of its title as Mahaan.
Rating: 2 / 5
(Streaming on Amazon Prime)
Bobby Sing
(bobbytalkscinema.com)
NOTE : The article was first published in THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL Newspaper (Mumbai Edition) on 26th February 2022.
