Shanmugam Muthusamy’s ‘Diesel’ is a massy saviour story that runs out of fuel pretty quickly

Harish Kalyan plays a young man from a fishing community who has to battle many enemies, from an uncaring government to uncaring private enterprises. The film also wants to be a larger story of a community. But nothing really works. That was the short take. A longer review follows, and it may contain spoilers.

There are two narrative tracks in Shanmugam Muthusamy’s Diesel, which is named after the crude-oil product as well as the character Harish Kalyan plays. The first track is your typical “hero saves his neighbourhood” story. Diesel comes from a fishing community in North Madras. Their livelihood and their homes are threatened when the government constructs a massive pipeline for crude oil. This pipeline cuts through these neighbourhoods, and they need a saviour. That’s our hero. He smuggles crude oil from the pipeline and becomes the Robin Hood of his people. And our villain is a cop named Mayavel (Vinay Rai). He kills a student union leader because it’s a kind of vaccination. This killing will prevent this kid from becoming a nuisance later. The cleanest, easiest thing to do would be to set this hero up against this villain, and let us watch the fireworks.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://galattaplus.com/shanmugam-muthusamys-diesel-is-a-massy-saviour-story-that-runs-out-of-fuel-pretty-quickly/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

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