Kanguva Movie Review: Kya Bana Diya?

Surya and Bobby Deol's latest movie Kanguva has been released in theatres. I saw it and I regret a lot but for two reasons, I was happy for a while. First of all, when a little footage of this movie was shown in the beginning, it grabbed my attention. Then the teaser etc. came and the scale of it, the production design of the movie, the costumes, the colours, the location, the sets looked amazing. It surprised me a lot that they are making such a movie, so naturally I was excited for it. Now some of you may not like that setting of 1000 years ago where a person does not have much to do and just fulfills his basic necessities and survives by fighting.

But I was personally very interested in this and the film is definitely good but there are a few things that are bothering and have spoiled the movie. In the beginning of the movie we see a very secret facility where experiments are being done on children. A boy escapes from it and reaches Goa, India. There we meet a very cool guy, Francis who is Surya, in 2024. Here you add all the scenes of Disha Patani where they are fighting among themselves and showing a love story. Earlier, a certificate of the censor board came in front of me in which they had a song from this movie, Yolo, you only live once which got a 3-second clip cut because of deep cleavage exposure.

The story of Kanguva has been divided in two time frames-2024 and 1070 BC. The 2024 episode goes on for the first 30-35-40 minutes and then after that once we switch, almost the whole picture is in 1070 BC and in the end you come back to 2024 and actually there is not much दम in its story, it is a re-incarnation story. 1000 years ago there are five tribes, one of which is Kanguva’s tribe, one is Bobby Deol’s tribe and other 3 tribes. The basic story showcases an attempt to grab power, tragedy and fighting among the tribe and a foreign power. There is one good thing I can definitely point out a little bit that the idea to raise the son of the person you killed, the movie invests a lot of time but what is shown is not very interesting. It's just the rest of the level is so low that this one thing alone stands out. The movie also tried some quirky things like in the beginning, AI generated photos and videos were used.

But the contrast is with the setting of the movie itself because the makers have shown such an advanced facility that one can experiment on people's minds, and your AI assistant sounds worse than those available on free websites these days. I went to watch it in a good theatre. The 3D glasses that were given to them were different, not cheap ones. And when the landscape shot came in the beginning, I was impressed that brother, this looks so damn good and because the rest of the movie is very good. Except it’s VFX which is hit and miss. When it's good, it's good, and when it's bad, the contrast levels are not matching the cutouts of the characters.

The silhouette is coming out white and not black. I don't know what is the director's fascination, he throws things like water, stones, leaves and arrows on your eyes at every small thing, earlier it used to feel good that yes, at least something has come here but now every 10-15 minutes something is coming, it got Really really irritating specially where ever there is any water, it is thrown on your face at every small thing, it is better to give us a bath instead. Disha Patani is there for comedy and has tried her best. The makers tried some things like including actual memes, Moye Moye song, reference to The Boys.

I gave my opinion on 3D, now let's talk about the Hindi dub because it's so bad, like so so bad, after the movie was over, I watched the trailer in the original language, I didn't understand anything, but it felt way better, if you want to get the experience without paying money, then watch the youtube trailer, Surya, the main actor in a double role, his voice is not suiting the whole picture, I'm not saying that the voice actor has done a bad job, but the voice is not matching the face and personality. So you only think, when this is the condition of the main hero, what will happen to the other characters. Now they have brought the actual voice of Bobby Deol in the film. As far as I have listened carefully, it sounds like Bobby Deol and his look has been made very dangerous.

The story around him has also been built up very well. But as soon as he opens his mouth and you see him on the screen, you must have automatically got an idea in your mind that how should the voice be, how will it suit, right? But the audio processing is so bad that it seems like he has recorded it on his phone's voice memo app and sent it. That seriousness, that heaviness is not felt. In fact, I can point out two specific places where Bobby Deol sounded like he is doing a very bad mimicry of Dharmendra. So you can imagine how much the movie has automatically come down because of these audio issues. It clearly feels like the Hindi version was an afterthought for the makers and was not taken that seriously. After this, there are two more final things.

First of all, Editing-Imagine the climax of the movie where a character is hanging somewhere and the villain is killing the hero. The rope to rescue that character is in the hero's hands but if the hero let’s go then the character will die. The whole scene is built at such a mid level, the villain is punching the hero one by one, cut to the shot of the character hanging and he is screaming, then come back, the villain is punching him, then it is shown that he is screaming, this just goes on at least 10-15 times and it is not like there is any change in the situation, they are at the same place where they are. After this, the action of the movie is quite mediocre, I will say because whatever you expect without seeing, exactly that is done, when the moments of hiting come, they will cut, you will not see it and once it has been hit, then later they will put slow motion, doing such a move in a very cool way.

There is nothing special in the choreography as well, take the sword, do this or that, hit 100 people, end of the story. I am very sure that the original Tamil version of the movie I have seen will definitely be better because the Hindi version of this pan India movie is so bad that I cannot recommend it. It is strictly only for those who want to see its visuals on the big screen, its story and overall theme which is nice and thoughtful or want to see the South movies as per the stereotypes, like creating hype moments and making the entry grand. If you want to go in this case then all the best but still keep the expectations low. There is a post credit scene consisting of Suriya and Karthi’s cameo which goes on for like 5 minutes. You can put the whole movie on one side and just this last 5 minutes on one side.

The screen presence of Karthi was amazing. They have even continued the story showing that Karthi’s character was the banished brother of Bobby Deol. The cameo was so surprising that while leaving the theatre, I could just think what will the makers show in Kanguva 2. Fun Fact: Karthi is Suriya’s brother in real life. Karthi is the good guy and Suriya is the bad guy in LCU (Lokesh Cinematic Universe) and in Kanguva, Suriya is the good guy and Karthi is the bad guy which is just so unanticipated. Kanguva failed to rise as per expectations and that is a major reason as to why it emerged as the Most Disastrous Film at the Box-Office just below Radhe Shyam which earned ₹214 crores at the Global Box Office. Kanguva is continuing its disastrous box office and has managed to earn only ₹115 crores with a budget of ₹300 to ₹350 crores. It is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam.