

‘Karuppu’ review: Suriya-starrer is a mangled mess
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The opening sequence of RJ Balaji’s Karuppu is all sparks and embers in a bichrome backdrop of red and black. It’s a nightmare in which a man gets assaulted by unknown assailants and a majestic rageful God descends to save him. The man, played by Indrans, jolts up in a train and looks at his daughter Binu (Anagha Ravi).
The Malayali father and daughter are in Chennai for Binu’s surgery and are soon mugged on the road and stripped of their mode of payment for her treatment—jewelry. After this clear establishment of geography, Karuppu eschews all locational specifics to build a world where folk mythology clashes with a land of comical lawlessness. Only we aren’t sure if the exaggeration is intentional or otherwise.Balaji and his co-writers (Ashwin Ravichandran, Rahul Raj, TS Gopi Krishnan, Karan Aravind Kumar) build an artificial structure where judiciary is run like mafia.
Lawyers operate a thuggish syndicate where they bribe judges to get judgements in their favor and threaten other lawyers to drop cases. Within minutes, they organize whole cartels to humiliate police officers if they so much as question them on procedure. Baby Kannan (RJ Balaji) is one such lawyer, the judge and the court at his feet, exploiting his clients as much as he does the system.
He makes dramatic challenges on the court premises (or wherever they all go for lunch), throwing case papers on the ground and asking if there's any lawyer who'd dare appear against him. Binu and her father, trying to recover their gold, get tangled in this world.Maybe we can buy Balaji’s preposterous setting, but the execution is painfully mediocre. He can't think beyond the level of YouTube skits; the courts look like sets of amateur
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