Indrajith movie review: This Gautham Karthik film doesn’t even try to keep the viewer engaged

Indrajith movie review: ndrajith is essentially about an archaeological mission to find a stone with medicinal powers.

Indrajith movie cast: Gautham Karthik, Ashrita Shetty, Sonarika Bhadoria, Sudanshu Pandey, Pratap Pothan
Indrajith movie director: Kalaprabhu
Indrajith movie rating: 1.5 stars

The only consolation I could derive from watching Indrajith is about a romance angle that wasn’t fleshed out. Indrajith (Gautham Karthik) spies on the girl-next-door when she is about to change. A full-fledged sequence plays out on how she takes revenge and leaves him in his boxers. When the duo meet again, we learn the girl is a doctor and by Tamil film conventions we know there is an injection involved that can’t be administered in the hand. I was sitting in the theater, dreading whether this ‘cute’ exchange would lead to a love story. Thankfully, it doesn’t. Worser things happen.

Indrajith is essentially about an archaeological mission to find a stone with medicinal powers; so potent that it can cure a snake bite as well as a gun wound. In line with Kollywood’s aspiration to ‘package’ stories with everything, Indrajith dabs into everything: action, humour, love, special effects. However, the problem is that these parts don’t work even in isolation, let alone as a package.

The ‘twist’ at the end was a massive ‘What the hell’ moment, there is no surprise. For everything is too easy for the eponymous Indrajith. There is an air of innocence that Gautham Karthik has that increases his charm on-screen. But I really hope the young actor chooses better scripts. Here, he can climb hills with ease, use jungle vines as a mode of transportation with such elan that Tarzan can take lessons. Now, while the concept of a hero who does everything isn’t new, it becomes tough to digest when the hero manages to survive a fall from a hilltop. The hero managing to catch a foothold and climbing back up unscathed is pushing the viewer’s tolerance too far.

Indrajith is an example of a lazily produced movie that doesn’t even try to keep the viewer engaged. And also, when a badly re-created VFX dog (for the most part) gets more screen space than the heroines together, you can imagine. The most crucial part is that it is not even integral to the story. Roles like these make me thankful for films like Aramm or Magalir Mattum, irrespective of how good or bad they are; they are a small reminder to posterity that women had a role beyond being the ‘love interest’ of some man.