Beast

This week sees the release of the first big theatrical Tamil-language blockbuster of 2022 in Nelson Dilipkumar’s Beast, a genre-bending – or perhaps more accurately, genre-confused – action-comedy starring Vijay. One of the biggest stars in the Tamil Nadu-based Kollywood film industry, Vijay’s films typically end up being a lot of fan service catchphrases and impossible but entertaining action sequences and dance numbers. Beast definitely fits into this mold, but sadly an incredibly confused tone gums up the works for a potential audience outside of the core demo, who may not have enough history with the actor or the style to fully give in to its idiosyncrasies.

Vijay is Veera, a former superspy-turned-private security consultant. When a botched assassination attempt leaves a little girl dead, Veera can’t shake the feeling of guilt for his actions. After a year he decides to take a job at a security firm to test the waters. His first job turns out to be more than he’d bargained for, as he accompanies his boss to a local Chennai mall just in time to see the building hijacked by terrorists demanding the release of a notorious bombing mastermind who just happens to have been the target of Veera’s traumatic failure a year earlier.

Landing somewhere between Die Hard and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Beast is an incredibly confusing and underwhelming affair. Director Nelson comes off the critical and commercial success of his 2021 action-comedy Doctor, a head-scratching affair telling a story about underage sex trafficking, but with jokes and musical numbers. Beast doesn’t go quite so off the rails as that one, but there are an awful lot of Martin & Lewis-styled jokes for a film that starts off with a toddler getting offed by a bazooka. However, even if this wild tonal whiplash is your thing – and I get it – there’s still something missing that might take this to the next level.

Everyone in this film seems to be acting their butts off, going all in for whatever their character needs. While it often seems like different characters, be it Veera’s bumbling boss played by VTV Ganesh or the terrorist mastermind played by Ankur Vikal, are acting in different movies, they all serve their purpose. Perhaps the one person doing the least actual acting is Vijay: His Veera is shown from the start to be almost superhuman, with the only outward sign of any depth or vulnerability being his reaction to the initial tragedy that sets the film in motion, but even that is relatively stunted. Thankfully the supporting cast around him picks up the emotional slack, leaving him room to dance up a storm and – in one terribly awkward sequence – rollerblade-battle the terrorists into submission.

For a big-budget action film, that aspect of the film is far more miss than hit in Beast. Though fans of these masala films will be accustomed to the disregard for physics inherent to the form, here much of the action seems weightless and haphazard. Veera cuts through swaths of baddies like butter, but you never really get the impression that any of it actually hurts: It’s pretty disappointing and not that fun to watch. In fact, the best action sequence in the film is a computer-aided aerial dogfight in the final reel that requires less of the performers than any of the bigger brawls.

Lackluster performances, confusing tonal shifts, and limp action sequences leave Beast in a kind of crossover purgatory. Neither universally entertaining nor quite bonkers enough to draw in Tamil-film newbies, this might be one for established fans only.