Captain Miller

My first theater watch of the year and it does use the big screen and sound impressively. But there are few movies that despite finding it to be very predictable, with so many moments that feel wasted, the emotions not hitting as they should and still come out satisfied with the end product like this. There are so many things going on in this movie, that it could have taken a lot of directions. Here, they chose to focus the most on the action and there are some great setpieces. Arun Matheshwaran knows how to make a frame look incredible and he does that brilliantly throughout the movie. There's so much that is told through framing and composition alone without actually saying anything. But unlike Rocky which followed an arthouse approach, this is a fully commercial approach without going overboard.

The problem with the movie is that there are so many characters and events happening that the emotions they are trying to convey are not fully realized on screen as they want to be. It felt like there might be a much longer cut that would properly justify and convey the emotions and if there is, that could be truly great.

Shiva Rajkumar was nice in his role. But his and Sundeep Kishan's roles really felt like they needed more screen time to give the full impact that was intended. Even Priyanka Mohan's character who had decent screen time lacked the proper writing for a lot of things to make sense.

In a way, it also felt like the familiarity of the way the story unfolds was also utilized to not explain a lot of things too much.

The dialogue about why the protagonist is joining the British army despite the freedom struggle happening was the high point in terms of writing in my opinion. That was used as a pivot point to start the journey. The action-packed nature of the movie also kind of lessened the impact of some of the more horrific stuff happening. But still, the action was terrific and even if the director falters when he tries to use the star elements of the actors, it doesn't go too much into the star worship level things that these types of films do.

GV Prakash Kumar's music is also a huge part of the movie as it really elevated a lot of the scenes and at times also made apparent why some aspects needed better writing.

It is unnecessary to say that Dhanush did a fantastic job but a lot of times the character became more than what is written because of his acting. He brought depth through performance that was not explored enough through writing and direction.

Ashraf Mallissery speaking Malayalam instead of Tamil when he's agitated is something I enjoyed in both this and Rocky. But the Malayalam audience in the theatre sure loved that dialogue.

Despite all of its problems, I enjoyed the movie a lot. The theatre experience was a blast and I really hope they have an extended cut for this.