NGK - Film review

Nanda Gopalan Kumaran is out on Amazon Prime since last week. One of the fastest films to hit the OTT Platform, even as mass fans and critics dubbed it as another dud for being too preachy on the social front. Somewhat similar to LKG feat. RJ Balaji which released three months back. NGK is played by Surya, fondly called Kumaran all through the film. He resigns a cushy job after completing his BE and Ph. D only to pursue Organic Farming in his native village where he enjoys working on the earthy fields, watching the evening turn in to nights and so on. Or so, he convinces his Mother and even as his educated wife (Sai Pallavi) who seem to love his decision to stay back in the native village. Well. 

Kumaran sees in a real situation how a local Village Counsellor commands so much influence on the Bureaucrats, in this case a Collector. So he decides to shun Organic Farming and suddenly become a hunchman cum errand boy for a powerful MLA overnight where he learns the tricks of the trade (read: Politics). He happens to meet Vanathi (Rakul Preet Singh) accidentally and gets up close with this digital media political strategist who works across political parties and lines. The film, which is slow from reel 1 only gets slower after the first 20 minutes as the plot folds, unfolds and repeats incessantly only to see Kumaran become a martyr of sorts amid intermittent boring songs.

As with his recent outings in Thaana Serndha Koottam, NGK gets preachy beyond sensibilities and overtly attacks every politician and a wannabe, from Stalin to Edapadi Palanisamy to Rajinikanth and Kamal Hassan. It’s bizarre that Director Selvaraghavan actually got away with the political junta. Perhaps they felt that no one would watch this stuff anyway, either at theatres or OTTs or Small screen, similar to Selvaraghavan’s Pudupettai or Kandhal Konden or 7G Rainbow Colony which is rarely telecast. Some dialogues are not even retrograde but beyond; like when the MLA tells an associate that he wouldn’t part with Kumaran, rather can trade his wife. Yuck. (Selva went through a bitter divorce btw). As in his previous outings, Selva promotes promiscuity although it’s not too clear whether Vaanathi and Kumaran share the bed. Thank God there are no semi-nude scenes like in Dhanush’s Mayakkam Enna where the character films porn. Yeah. That’s a special Selvaraghavan genre by itself, where Cinema takes a different level altogether of absurdity through creativity. 

YuvanShankar Raja (I guess he’s retained this long name even after his religious conversion) is back with Selva yet again but all the songs including Peranbe by Sid Sriram are hardly likeable, forget playing being hummable or worthwhile to be played on repeat mode like many of Surya’s hit songs. The BGM is very average and doesn’t make a cut, especially with Selva’s dialogue delivery which is akin to watching a real drama ( at a theatre) where the characters narrate long dialogues, pause, look up each other and repeat with a special camera appearance at each angle. Frankly, it gets very boring and monotonous, this type of film making. 

If you felt my review was rude, well I have tried to be very dignified in this one. Trust me.