The sheer temerity of Ashwath Marimuthu’s absurd romcom Dragon in Tamil, left me nonplussed. How can any number of women be seen falling for the scoundrel hero: Raghavan cheats, bunks, defrauds, bullies, mansplains, and heckles… all this without a shred of remorse or apology?
Raghavan has been duping his parents for years, pretending to be an employed wage earner, showing up with a salary collected at month-end from his friends (with friends like these….), to show to his innocent parents.
The set-up is typically brash. Raghavan is shown to be a law unto himself. Not particularly smart or charming, he has a way with women and words—sometimes together. When his girlfriend of many years, Keerthy (Anupama Parameswaran), decides to leave him for a stable marriage, the livid (and spurned) Ragahavan rounds his fist to hit her in the face in a crowded restaurant. Years later, she reappears as Raghavan’s teacher, writing notes for him and helping him clear his arrears.
It seems Arjun Reddy has legitimized violence as a manifestation of love. Dragon endorses misogyny, fraudulence, and other criminal activities and caps it all with a closure where Raghavan (a.k.a Dragon) repents and redeems himself with an act of selflessness that is totally out of character.
That said, I have to admit that some portions of the film are mildly engaging. When Raghavan’s fiancée Pallavi (Kayadu Lohar) lands in Mumbai unannounced, and he pretends to be in Chennai, she flies to Chennai while he desperately tries to drive down to Chennai before she touches down.
I would have liked a whole rom-com based on that episode alone. Lamentably, the film is desirous of being ambitious on behalf of a ‘hero’ who has no ambitions except to wriggle out of supremely sticky situations.
The most problematic and largest slice of the screenplay is devoted to Raghavan’s educational manoeuvres which entail bogus certificates, fudged mark sheets and hijacked examination papers.
It is astonishing that any filmmaker would consider such serious misdemeanour to be fodder for entertainment. This is a truly idiotic interpretation of 3 Idiots.
The screenplay is seriously twisted in its moral compassing, and alarming in its endorsement of aberrant behaviour. Everyone around Raghavan seems to condone his criminalized behaviour and ghastly chicanery. It is the boys-will-be-boys syndrome.
This toxic protagonist should be held accountable for the trail of damage done to the people he encounters. All he gets is a token punishment amounting to a tap on the knuckle and a ruffling of hair.
Dragon is a homage to the spirit of political incorrectness. The film seems to have been written to bring out the plus points in its leading man, Pradeep Ranganathan. He wheezes his way through half the film, trying to show us how physically and mentally taxing truancy is for Raghavan. This is a life that shouldn’t be celebrated. It should be buried under mounds of shame.
