‘Weapon’ movie review: A chaotic superhero film that plays out like an action-figure fantasy game

A scene from ‘Hathiyaar’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Movies often become the creations of filmmakers who refuse to look beyond their own ideas and perspectives. Guhan Senniappan’s superhero movie Weapon This is the latest proof of that. Despite all the hullabaloo over the poor performance of Marvel and DC in the last five years; how few Hollywood productions have managed to deal with the growing superhero fatigue; despite earlier attempts in Tamil cinema that taught us about the dangers of not connecting the story to the setting; and even with an Indian title Minnal Murali Breaking down the formulas, we have WeaponA two-hour showreel filled with clichéd superhero metaphors that feels like a child’s fantasy story complete with action-figures.

The film lacks flow from start to finish, but within the first 30 minutes, you realise how cliched the ideas are and how messy the screenwriting can be. Weaponsuperpowers come from a superhero serum (as captain America) which was stolen from the Nazis by an Indian soldier during Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s meeting with Hitler in 1942. When the Swastika Brigade comes to India to get their prized possession back, the soldier injects it into his son Mithran, who grows up to become a superhuman (Sathyaraj) with superhuman strength, telekinesis and telepathy.

but in the grand scheme of the world WeaponMithran is a mere cog in the wheel. In the present day, an explosion at the Neutrino Power Plant generates multiple interlinked sub-plots, one no better than the other and whose characters are just as shallow. We have Agni (Vasanth Ravi), a YouTuber who chases superheroes so he can use them for ecological conservation. Then there is the Black Society 9, a Hydra-like organisation that controls the Indian economy, headed by Dev Krishanv aka DK (Rajeev Menon); he is a Lex Luthor figure with the intelligence of a kingpin, who uses children to illegally test his limb regeneration serum taken from lizards (the speed at which these limbs grow would put Marvel characters Deadpool and the Lizard to shame). Oh, did I read Solomon’s story?

Also shown on screen are a random team of assassins, the concept of “kundalini energy”, the aura that humans possess, flying devices that glow like bees, and a cyborg-like sequel. Oops!

A scene from ‘Hathiyaar’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

And none of these characters or ideas gel in this confusion. Even veteran actor Sathyaraj gets the bad part of the deal. At least having an action-demanding superpower ensures that the 69-year-old Sathyaraj looks as formidable as this Logan-esque Professor X character. But he is stuck in a plot that uses him merely as a showpiece to keep the plot centred. If there was any scope for emotional investment in the story, it was in the compassion it generated – how Mithran grew up – but the use of slideshows of shoddy-looking AI-generated images adds a certain plasticity.

Now, while all of this points to a poorly written screenplay, what makes the film even more challenging to watch is its editing, conception of scenes and staging. In a crucial scene, a child crossing the road is saved from a recklessly driven truck by a ‘mysterious man’; in the plot, this is meant to lead to crucial surveillance footage evidence of superhumans. If this scene instantly reminds you of Christopher Reeve’s Superman or Sam Raimi’s Spiderman, then you know how the basic idea of ​​superheroes came into pop culture. And the writing, execution and editing of this scene alone – and the way the surveillance footage is shot – should tell you that even though Guhan is a fan of superhero cinema, the filmmaker in him with a passion for creating superhero content needs to step out of his filter bubble and explore. For now, despite using everything he has in his arsenal, the film only ends up as a forgettable misfire.

Weapon is playing in theaters now