‘Mathagam’ review: The rowdies steals the show – Scroll.in

When the tagline for a present is “The Night time is Lengthy”, a hunt that’s imagined to be time-bound loses its sense of urgency. If characters are being launched late within the narrative, you recognize what it’s essential do: be affected person, sit again, and search for the distractions.

Of which, in Mathagam, there are lots. Prasath Murugesan’s engrossing Tamil-language collection for Disney+ Hotstar has some of the vibrant galleries of rowdies since humankind took to crime. Such personages as Coin Siva, Ice Field and Mava Sait are launched in model, with convincing case recordsdata detailing their exploits, right down to line-up images and newspaper experiences. Every of them has distinguishing traits too. One likes to sing. One other is an occult practitioner.

These criminals, nonetheless distinctive, reply to 1 man. Padalam Sekar (Ok Manikandan), also called the Whale, is assembling Chennai’s whole underworld for a celebration with an unspoken agenda. Padalam’s connections run deep, from an unidentified crime lord in Mumbai to the minister Veeraval (Ilavarasu).

When the high-ranking police officer Ashwath (Atharvaa) decides to go after Padalam, he has to clear the operation with the police commissioner Sayanthika (Dilnaz Irani).

Murugesan’s screenplay is designed like a cat-and-mouse recreation with a heavy hat-tip to the American collection The Wire. Cellphone surveillance places Padalam inside Ashwath’s sights. The nearer Ashwath will get to his prey, the extra he understands about corruption within the police drive and the federal government.

Sub-plots embody Ashwath’s fraught relationship along with his spouse Vaideghi (Nikhila Vimal), who’s within the throes of post-partum despair. In the course of organising what’s described as the most important heist Chennai has ever seen, Padalam is ready to reconnect along with his lover Saif (Dhivyadharshini).

Murgesan converts slack pacing into a possibility to indicate off his excellent supporting forged. Every of the villains has sufficient scenes to burnish their bios. Supporting characters on the legislation enforcement facet too have extra to do than stand round. The forged contains Gautham Menon as Sayanthika’s bureaucrat husband, who bails Ashwath out of a sticky scenario.

Understated performances, on-location taking pictures and a sensible portrayal of policework compensate for the typically maddening indifference to momentum. The slow-burn strategy works greatest in favour of Ok Manikandan, who is great as Padalam.

Mercurial, ruthless and cerebral, Padalam shows his tender facet in Safi’s presence, hinting that there’s extra to him than the chargesheets included in his case file. Against this, Ashwath is portrayed as watchful, just a few steps behind Padalam, which doesn’t give Atharvaa a lot to do besides give directions on the telephone and drop the occasional aphorism in English (“No quantity of darkness can disguise a spark of sunshine”).

The five-episode collection has a built-in cliffhanger, forcing us to attend for the second when hunter and the hunted will lastly meet. Aside from the suspicion that we’re in the course of a film that grew to become a collection to do justice to the supporting forged, Mathagam does a good job of ratcheting up the suspense. The present’s idiosyncratic rhythms encourage endurance. The high-quality ensemble of actors ensures that this endurance is rewarded.

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