Fantasy island: "Retro"

An initially diverting, increasingly exhausting grab bag of poetry, punching and downright perversity from the much-vaunted Tamil stylist Karthik Subbaraj, the period actioner Retro seems an unlikely candidate for being All About Trauma. It is, all the same, in its roundabout and ever-distractible way. Much of the film unfolds at the end of the last century, and forms an especially colourful retelling of that old yarn about the gangster who struggles to go straight. Yet the key damage is done in a 1960-set prologue in which orphaned young hero Paari sees his immediate protectors slain in turf warfare between two rival firms. In his childhood and teens, this sulky, recessive boy is repeatedly told by loved ones how great he'd look if he'd only smile. But he cannot smile, because his beloved mother died when he was still in knee-high socks; fully grown into local superstar Suriya, he can't even smile on his wedding day, because the bearded godfather who adopted him as a boy (Joju George) has Paari shaken down and puts a hit out on our boy's blushing bride Rukmini (Pooja Hegde); he can't smile during a subsequent spell behind bars, because he's constantly hearing reports that suggest Rukmini may well have moved on without him. We are, then, stuck watching a gloomyguts hero who will spend two hours plus lapsing into the old, bad habits - the pitch could have been the Devdas myth as filmed by Tarantino - so it's a mighty good job that Suriya knows how to kick ass and bust a move when required. It's even better news that his director here knows how to do likewise.

I haven't seen anything like enough of his previous work to confirm this, but - if Retro is anything to go on - Subbaraj loves elaborate, free-flowing one shots (or digitally enhanced approximations thereof), vibrant shades of neon, and character actors capable of twisting stock genre situations into striking, funny, eyecatching new shapes. As a writer, he's also a devotee of the rule of three, evident not just in the triangle pendant Paari wears around his neck for the duration (a symbol that morphs into the Aquaman-style trident he's seen to wield come the finale) but the trio of antagonists who share the frame in the pre-intermission splitscreen, and even the movie's crossstitch-ready strapline "Love, Laughter, War", which turns out to represent the three courses of treatment Subbaraj prescribes for his hero's persistent blues. This opening stretch is where Retro is at its most rigorous and invigorating. Love is embodied by Hegde, styled more appreciably than usual in what finally proves a nothingy role of the feminine ideal; laughter is Jayaram as one "Dr. Chaplin Lolly", a stammering laughter therapist who pratfalls into Paari's orbit; and the war is, well... let's just say there's a lot of it about here. Subbaraj seizes on this trifecta as a proven formula for the mass movie - keening romance, a few jokes, action - even if the last of these ultimately comes to stomp, loudly and violently, all over the first two.

What's missing? Gravity, primarily. Much as Paari's flying kicks sometimes seem to defy all established laws of physics, Retro isn't really serious about dramatising childhood trauma - it's merely a starting point, as firm a hook to hang a movie on as anything else these days. That may be why the film eventually retreats into a world of its own, holing up in a lawless offshore colony that was formerly the site of a rubber plantation. Geographically, it's an island; narratively, it's an archipelago, made up of bits and pieces from Squid Game, Battle Royale, Django Unchained, Street Fighter and Mad Max: Fury Road, all likely reference points for an image-crazed 42-year-old filmmaker to be carrying around inside his head. This second half is undeniably very movie-ish, right down to the resurrection of old movie songs (retro!), but even before the intermission, and doubly so afterwards, we seem to be going round and round, marooned on The Island of Cartoonish Spectacle: deafeningly loud shirts, gouts of blood, torrential rain, neverending chapter headings, lopped limbs, Herod-like childcare provision, and crashing rock power chords interlaced with thumping EDM beats. The movie's virtues and limitations have all been enshrined right there in its UK certificate: Retro is a film 15-year-olds (and 15-year-old boys in particular) are bound to react to as if it were the coolest thing they ever did see, and at the same time one which perhaps only 15-year-olds (15-year-old boys) would ever find cool.

Retro is now playing in selected cinemas.