So when I sat down to watch Magudam, in all earnestness, I had got some expectations as this is Vishal's debut direction and I was curious to see how he would do it being the lead actor and the director as well, but at the end of it, I couldn't help but be more baffled than anything else on what it tried to be.
Until betrayal and conflict begin to taint him, Linga is a peaceful man working as a medical representative and shipping harbor worker in a coastal community, until things go wrong, and he has to go back to his violent self to save his son from menacing gangsters who threaten everything he's built on paper, that sounds like a decent formula for a vicious revenge story, one that can be done right.
But this is where, for me, the runtime (it's a whopping 2 hours and 58 minutes for a story I had little interest in) begins to feel unnecessary, I don't remember how many times I checked to see how much time had passed when I realized not much of anything really felt like it was building toward anything substantial, a lot of it felt like the movie was just stretching itself and I couldn't tell how some parts of it related to the rest, so it was more of a chore to watch instead of an experience.
I was hoping at least that the action would become an asset for me, because the background of the story is an action star like Vishal, but that didn't happen and a lot of it was just over ghe top with really not much tension underpinning it, so it was kind of like a show for the sake of it.
But it was the emotional core that was the weakest thing, the idea of caring for Linga, his son, his past, the stakes that are attached to him becoming an ethereal creature, the emotional moments between him and the other characters were just flat and forced and didn't really make me feel anything, the movie didn't make an effort to make me feel anything, it sold me this idea and it didn't make me feel anything, even the romantic thread that was thrown in somewhere in the second half was so clichéd that it seemed as though it was added merely to ensure that the story checked a box.
The pacing was, I'm being honest, not very good either in the first half, it was just slow, not like it was trying to be or purposefully so, no, it was just slow, I found myself thinking about other things more than once and this rarely happens to me while watching movies that I'm trying to pay attention to.
I do believe that the production and the visuals did get their fair share of moments here, and while there were some scenes that felt somewhat polished and, indeed, suited the coastal, gritty vibe that was the movie's game, the music and background score also all did their bit in helping the scenes along, lending them some energy when they needed it.
I left Magudam feeling, however, that the potential was lost in filler or bloated storytelling and predictability, so much so that I felt like I had seen it done better elsewhere, just repackaged with more pretty pictures and a longer run time that it did not deserve.
Rating: 60/100