Siva’s underwhelming ‘Kanguva’ wants to be an epic, but that takes more than just bigness of scale

On paper, the action-adventure story has a superb emotional core, but on screen, the film feels like disconnected scenes cut and put together. Everything lacks that little extra that transforms generic stuff into great stuff.

There is a terrific moment a few minutes after the interval point, where – centuries ago – a tribal leader named Kanguva (Suriya) makes a promise to a young boy. The boy wants something. Kanguva says that the boy can have what he wants – but first, Kanguva has to save his people, his race. The nature of this transaction – especially what the boy wants – is right out of mythology. I wondered why this huge moment, this epic moment was not the interval point. I wondered why it was placed after the interval. But then, look at the interval point. What I was talking about is a vulnerable, emotional, extremely specific moment, while the image at interval point is a triumphant-but generic moment, where Kanguva raises his sword and roars that war is coming. The image is all surface, and that’s what Kanguva is: a surface-level epic. It’s an action-adventure that wants to wow us with visuals, and it forgets that epics are really made of emotions.

You can read the rest of the review here:

https://www.galattaplus.com/sivas-underwhelming-kanguva-wants-to-be-an-epic-but-that-takes-more-than-just-bigness-of-scale/

You can watch the trailer / video review here:

Copyright ©2024 GALATTA.