Sarpatta Parambarai

Gloves on, the film scores enough points to keep you watching through its slo-mo punches with mouths agape. Gloves off, it struggles, often resorting to an endless barrage of pugilistic cheers and trash talk. Indeed, trading barbs make up most of the dialogue. “Ni puli illai da, muuku shali” will raise a chuckle. Even if it is a boxing movie where machoism is driven to extremes, you can only take so much of it before it gets exhausting. Instead of using his gifted ensemble to spotlight Kabilan’s story as the face of Tamil Nadu’s working class amid rising political tensions, Ranjith fills the time between the matches with shouting matches and worse: melodrama. The film punches well below its weight. Sarpatta Parambarai isn’t a black eye for boxing movies. But it’s no knockout either.

I particularly enjoyed the character of Dancing Rose (Shabeer Kallarakkal) and was entranced by his dancing antics inside the boxing ring. It’s a mark of the film’s writing (Pa Ranjith and novelist Tamil Prabha) that even this character isn’t treated as dispensable side-quest fodder and gets instead a chance at redemption. If I had a complaint at all, it would be that as good an actor as Pasupathy is (playing Rangan vaathiyaar), I wish we had learned more about him, given that the guru-shishya relationship is at the heart of this film. What’s his relationship with his son, Vetriselvan? What are his weaknesses? What boxing expertise keeps him on top of his game as a manager? What made him such a terrific boxer? Nevertheless, all the supporting actors seem to have really bought into the film, and the rich universe is among my favourite aspects of Sarpatta Parambarai.

However, towards the final act, Ranjith runs out of tricks. The training montage and the emotional depth of the act feel highly derivative of everything that the director has done in the previous two acts. The climax doesn’t achieve the emotional high of the interval sequence, which is something of a shock. Sarpatta Parambarai is arguably the best boxing film in the history of Tamil cinema. It is because the bar for combat sport films set by Ranjith’s predecessors was quite low. In a way, Ranjith has broken new ground in the genre by simply trying to be mindful of the sport he’s dealing with.