Thoughts on Leo: Vijay's Best & Lokesh Kanagaraj's Worst
Shockingly vacuous and disappointing film
I re-watched Kaithi just the day before my viewing of Leo and it reminded me of all of the reasons why I love Lokesh Kanagaraj’s films. Leo made me forget all of those reasons.
The film is mediocre at best and cringe at its worst. Forgettable villains, family moments that don’t make any kind of emotional impact, average fight sequences, and an absolute drag of a climax.
The film is a visual extravaganza (except for that half-done CGI car at the end of the chase sequence) - the color grading, the FPV drone shots, the motorized robot-camera shot of Leo smoking a cigarette, and the hyena. The film is also a great “scream generation machine”. But, it is ultimately soulless because there are no stakes involved. In Kaithi, the tension was beautifully built - there was Dilli and his 10 year old daughter’s who were meeting for the first time, 5 innocent lives stuck inside the commissioner’s office as the building was being pounded by thugs, we had the head of the mafia Adaikalam behind bars and trying to escape, hundreds of police officers fighting for their lives. All of this was happening simultaneously in one night. The stakes were high and there was enormous tension that kept you hooked. But there is no such hook in Leo. We get a final fight sequence whose outcome I couldn’t care less about because it was between Parthi and a mere sidekick (Harold Das) to a weak main villain (Antony Das - who was also poorly written). If only Lokesh spent half the amount of resources on the characterization of the villains as he did on introducing his stellar cast.
Even the action sequences were dull (barring that one terrific sequence in the cafe). The ingenuity and creativity in violent scenes that you come to expect from Lokesh’s films were sorely missing. Lokesh settles for cheap tricks and hopes it will elevate the experience for the audience. In one scene, Vijay just starts running to rush to his house. Why? Couldn’t he have taken his bike/car if he was in that much hurry? And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, he jumps on top of a random horse on the street and uses it to go home. These supposedly mass moments are not rooted in the story. Rather, they are there purely as eye candy. This is not what you expect from someone who has been a bar-raiser for mass-action films in Tamil cinema.
I was happy when I heard that there would not be any punch dialogues in the film. And for that, Vijay has my respect - the guy picking a script that doesn’t pedestalize and glorify him is him going out of his comfort zone. And the Leo Das flashback part worked for me - I liked seeing the Gilli Vijay. But a twin sister who wears the exact same attire as Leo? Even if Lokesh had a modicum of sophistication in him, he would get that it is more interesting if twins didn’t dress the same. But again, cheap tricks.
To make things worse, you get a scene where Parthi sings the song Dance Monkey to his daughter to make her fall asleep. I cannot decide which one scarred me more - the lullaby scene or the scene where Anirudh really sang the words ‘I need to pee’ in a wanna-be cool way. Et tu, Anirudh?
The introduction to LCU was forced. If Loki just had the Vikram part in the end, it would have worked wonderfully. But instead, we get a scene that does nothing to further the plot of Leo in any meaningful way. He deliberately gets gashed just to get one police officer stationed in front of his house. The desperation does not make any sense. Did he really think that a single average police officer could save his family from the thugs? No. Then why did he make such a big deal out of it? Again, something that the story itself doesn’t demand but it exists because they want to show that Leo is a part of LCU. Sure, there is a pay-off for that police character later in the film but it could've been any police officer.
There were a few things that I did enjoy. Vijay’s acting was better than most of his recent films. The initial fight sequence at the cafe was definitely bloody sweet. The car chase sequence was cool - it had this video-game aesthetic to it which nothing like like what I've seen before. The booby trap sequence was fun. The hyena being a metaphor for Parthi also was a clever bit of writing. But all of these, unfortunately, do not redeem the film.
A lot of the flaws in the film can be condoned if it was by any other filmmaker. But they cannot be overlooked in a Lokesh Kanagaraj film. People seem to love pointing out that “the film isn’t that bad, we just had very high expectations from Lokesh Kanagaraj”. But Lokesh earned that with stellar films like Kaithi and Vikram. Even if he did not try to meet the sky-high expectations, he could have at least made a respectably good film. But to stoop down this level of mediocrity? I guess Lokesh did beat our expectations after all.
Until the next film!