India, June 26 -- Ananthan Kaadu shows up with plenty of expectations and this kind of ambitious vision, but somehow those big lofty ideas keep end up weighing the film down. Writer Murali Gopy builds a narrative that is rooted in history, and it kind of drags in references to the Sri Lankan Eelam conflict along with the caste politics of late 1980s Thiruvananthapuram.

A Predictable Revenge Story Wrapped in Layers of Political Commentary

Once you look past its kind of ambitious historical backdrop, the film kind of follows a revenge formula that feels pretty familiar. But then as the story keeps going, it slides into something more conventional, where a powerful political leader betrays his own trusted men, and they then go out to settl...