Chennai, India – Vishal’s Magudam is a three-hour-long dual identity thriller that feels like a copy of a copy of a hundred films you’ve been watching for decades. The film introduces us to medical representative Kripa and his family, hammering home their middle-class desire to buy a car with sentimental scenes and a cringy family song.
The car is clearly important to the plot, but the film takes so long to get to the point that you begin to expect a twist so original it would make M. Night Shyamalan jealous. Unfortunately, the film’s invention ends with just one newish idea: a mistaken identity involving two look-alikes—one good and one bad.Nothing in Magudam feels original.
The big transformation scene, where Kripa explodes from a cowardly bumpkin into an action hero, mirrors Vishal’s own performances in Pandiya Naadu and Naan Sigappu Manithan. Even the action scenes are stale, with no clever staging. The film only gets duller in the second half, which shifts to Andhra in the 1980s, giving the film an excuse to fill each frame with obvious wigs. The younger version of Lingaa is a lazy rehash of his character in Mark Antony.
The film repeatedly takes 10 minutes longer than necessary to get to its point, assuming the audience will stay with it all along.There’s nothing in Magudam to justify its three-hour runtime. Vishal’s last release was the surprise hit Madha Gaja Raja, a film released after lying in the cans for 13 years. In his effort to repeat that film’s success, Vishal seems to have made a film that feels like it’s been lying in the cans for at least twice as long. Magudam is a stale, bloated thriller that fails to offer any surprises or originality, leaving audiences frustrated and exhausted by its relentless mediocrity.
