Sardar Movie Review: A spy-thriller with a social message

Karthi’s new outing ‘Sardar’ has him in a dual role — father, who is a spy, and son, who is a cop. It is his third attempt playing dual roles after ‘Siruthai’ and ‘Kashmora’. It is the actor’s riveting performance that holds together ‘Sardar’ and makes it an engaging watch… to a large extent. PS Mithran is one of those filmmakers who have expansive, commendable ideas but are not really skilled enough to incorporate them wisely in a film. ‘Sardar’ suffers the same problem as his previous films ‘Irumbuthirai’ and ‘Hero’. While ‘Irumbuthirai’ was about cyber crimes, ‘Hero’ tried to expose the faults in our education system. On similar lines, ‘Sardar’ has its focus on water and geopolitics. Unlike the other two films, what works in the favour of ‘Sardar’ is that it has a riveting spy-thriller angle to it. It brings a lot of raciness and brains to the film.

‘Sardar’ begins with the younger Karthi, who is Vijay Prakash, a fun-loving smart cop. He craves for fame as his father Chandra Bose was declared a national traitor, due to which, all his family members committed suicide. Vijay, who is looking for new ways to erase the identity of being a traitor’s son, finds a perfect catch when he takes up the case of catching an unidentified person, who has stolen a highly classified file from the Research and Analysis Wing’s (RAW) secret vault. The investigation leads him to a lot of disturbing realities and eventually the truth of his father’s legacy. Bose, who goes by the spy code Sardar, meanwhile is at the Chittagong prison for around 30 years. Towards the interval block, the screenplay lands at an interesting point when both the father and the son learn about the bigger picture. From there, it’s about how the two try and stop the evil forces at work.

PS Mithran, like his previous films, is clueless about adding needless commercial elements. In a film that’s as serious and racy as this, there’s no need for any romance or songs. Both the Karthis get love interests in Raashi Khanna and Rajisha Vijayan, and it’s not as if they bring any value to the narrative. Thankfully, Laila, in her comeback, gets a meaty role. It is her character Sameera through which Vijay Prakash and the audience learn about the water conglomerate, One India One Pipeline.

Like mentioned above, Karthi’s performance is one of the best things about ‘Sardar’. The film has two terrific action blocks and the actor pulls it off with aplomb. The spy thriller angle of ‘Sardar’ has immense potential and no wonder why the makers chose for an open-ended ending hinting at a sequel. One can only wish that Mithran holds his tendency to squeeze in so much information that by the time the film ends, you forget most of it.