 "Doctor review: Nelson Dilipkumar delivers a solid gold hoot of a movie")
These are lean times for cinema across the globe. Even more so in India where going to the cinema every week is a national pastime. Indian cinema, much ravaged by the pandemic in more than one way, needs something solidly entertaining to draw the audience back to the theatres. So far, not a single movie that made its way to the cinemas has been a unanimous hit and barely made a dent at the box office and that should pinch all the stakeholders of the movie business. Telugu movies took the lead and Vakeel Saab and Love Story have been decent hits but still they lacked the bite to pique the interest of broad sections of the audience.
At such a critical juncture I believe Sivakarthikeyan-starrer Doctor is quite possibly the first big post-pandemic Indian hit. A one-line description of this Tamil movie is that an army doctor comes up with intelligent ideas to help his ‘ex-fiancee’s’ brother to find his abducted daughter. However, this won’t do justice to describe this wickedly intelligent movie. Nelson Dilipkumar’s screenplay is a sight to behold on screen, at least for most part of it.
Nelson’s debut movie Kolamavu Kokila was a runaway hit and its deliciously dark humour is very much visible in Doctor as well. Doctor is the kind of movie Vikram Kumar tried to make with the Nani-starrer Gang Leader but his execution got wrong and Nelson got it pitch perfect. The movie begins on a hilarious note where the protagonist’s stoic personality is shredded to pieces by his love interest (a brilliant Priyanka Arul Mohan) who breaks off her engagement with him. Things take an interesting turn immediately when the heroine’s niece gets kidnapped and Siva’s character puts wheels in motion to trace her. He puts together a rag-tag team to execute his plan of getting to the criminal who is running a human trafficking ring.
These are the movie’s best parts, especially the sequence where Yogi Babu gets forcibly inducted into the team by the dint of him being an expert at kidnapping. Siva as the emotionless doctor who comes up with multiple innovative ideas at the drop of hat is a revelation and needed this movie after a series of duds. The movie loses its way in the second half when the director expects the audience to suspend disbelief and accept the doctor as a simpleton when he’s in fact proving to be brainier than a spy. However, proceedings get livelier again Vinay Rai enters as the suave, creepy, amazing head of the human trafficking ring.
He steals every scene that he shares with Siva and keeps the movie’s tempo steady. Anirudh’s music is a shimmering miracle that keeps the movie together. Both the album and background music are just what the movie needed to walk that fine line between being deliciously dark and downright macabre. Until further notice, Anirudh is the best young music director among the current crop in South Indian film industries.
Ratsasan is a recent example of a movie centred on kidnapping of girls doing well. Mardaani 2 also touched upon those issues. But Doctor takes an awesomely pretty take on these subjects. Without diluting the message, Nelson’s screenplay has all the commercial elements. There’s a brilliantly executed fight scene on a Chennai metro train involving Raghu Ram and his twin brother. Equally exhilarating is the whole sequence where Siva goes into the villain’s den in the climactic portions.
Like Lokesh Kanagaraj, Nelson too promises a bright future for Tamil cinema. The Tarantino-esque absurdity that he brings to the table sans pareil in Indian cinema at the moment. It remains to be seen what kind of fireworks he gins up for his next directorial venture Beast, which has Vijay in the lead role. The exuberantly crafted Doctor tells us Beast will be also be another thrilling ride.