New Delhi, Aug. 9 -- Tamil cinema's current epidemic is directors auditioning themselves as leads, and Lokesh Kanagaraj is its latest carrier. In Arun Matheswaran's DC, Kanagaraj is Devadas, a wronged hero discarded by society. He beats, shoots, maims and kills, but doesn't like to be called a rowdy or a gangster. There are no backstories in DC; Das and his gang are a strange mix of delinquents with revolutionary blood running inside them. They have a leader, Arasu (Thalaivasal Vijay), whose aims and ideologies are equally nebulous, but in the first few scenes in the film the gang accosts a police vehicle to steal a weapons consignment.

An inadvertent act by a cop leads to the gang exacting revenge by savagely murdering him, which in tur...