Rating: 3.5 stars on 5
Karthik Subbaraj is a filmmaker who has many aces up his sleeve but the bouncer he delivered with Jigarthanda Double X was completely and delightfully unexpected. This gangster movie is a prequel to his 2014 cult classic, Jigarthanda, which bagged two National Awards. In many ways, Jigarthanda Double X is (obviously) similar to the 2014 film – a gangster flick, revolving around two men and a filmmaker are core to this story too. Beyond that, the 2023 film takes on a life of its own as Subbaraj has brought in the political and social angle in a meta movie.
We have two main characters at play in this film set in the 1970s – gangster Allius Caesar (Raghava Lawrence) from Madurai who is also head of the Jigarthanda Club. Caesar is movie-crazy and is an ardent Clint Eastwood fan – in fact, his theatre in Madurai is called Clintees Talkies. His dream is to become the first dark-skinned hero in a pan-Indian film and have a cutout as big as Clint Eastwood’s in front of his theatre. Then we have Ray Dasan (SJ Suryah), who pretends to be a director and former assistant of Satyajit Ray, and comes to Madurai to shoot the life of Caesar and deliver a blockbuster. But Dasan has an ulterior motive and danger lurks in the corner for Caesar.
The movie then travels with both these men – as Dasan shoots Caesar’s life, the trials and tribulations both of them face come to the surface. Cinema is not for entertainment as Dasan, Caesar – and the audience discover – but it has the inherent power to affect, influence and change society. This is what director Karthik Subbaraj has tried to bring through in Jigarthanda Double X and in this narrative has woven in the world of gangsters, politics, the environment and the life of tribal people. Quite meta to say the least.
Both Raghava Lawrence and SJ Suryah are exceptional in the movie and truly live their characters. Larence’s dance skills are used quite aptly and as an actor he really shines. Director-turned-actor SJ Suryah has proved his mettle in earlier films and he executed the role of a director in this film to a T. One must say that Karthik Subbaraj got his casting perfectly right. While the first half of the film was entertaining and set up well, the second half of the film starts to meander a little with too many elements being thrown in. Despite these snags, the film is a worthy watch.
The BGM by Santhosh Narayanan is brilliant and really elevates the film several notches. Narayanan has used a variety of elements from local, tribal beats to new age ones to make the score commendable. The cinematography by Thiru is also very good.
This is perhaps the first time that director Karthik Subbaraj has been really vocal – through cinema – about his views on the environment and the political world. There is a strong social message that comes through in Jigarthanda Double X and using a gangster film to convey this is quite clever. Hat tip to Karthik Subbaraj.