Darbar combines the superpowers of director A. R. Murugadoss with Rajinikanth’s slick on-screen presence for an entertaining Tamil thriller. Darbar’s plot follows Rajnikanth as a cop, who’s on the prowl to capture a feared gangster, played by Suniel Shetty, in a completely new avatar. The plot thickens as we uncover more details from Rajnikanth’s character’s past and presents greatly dramatic twists and turns. The film was released on January 9, 2020, and accumulated Rs 209.3 crore (world gross), according to IMDb.
Review
An engaging cop film
In the films of AR Murugadoss, justice isn’t always delivered by upholding the law of the land. Be it in Ramana or Thuppakki or Kaththi, his protagonists have to break law to ensure justice is served. And that is what happens in Darbar, where an angry cop goes on a murderous rampage to take down a most-wanted criminal. Right in the opening scenes, the director establishes that his protagonist Aaditya Arunasalam (Rajinikanth), a top cop who has been deputed to Mumbai to tackle the drug menace in the city, isn’t someone who goes by the rule book. In fact, we see him threatening and roughing up the members of the Human Rights Commission who question him about his rule-breaking (The film tries to project Arunasalam as a mentally disturbed person to justify his extrajudicial killings).
The Film Is Disappointing, Rajinikanth Isn’t
Darbar is a long and patchy film that takes ages to gather momentum, but it delivers a passable first half. But barring the first quarter of the post-interval segment, it then sinks into a state of torpor that even the magic of Rajinikanth cannot shake it out of. Although Suniel Shetty has his moments, no big showdown between the hero and the villain is staged. A Rajinikanth film without a baddie big enough to give the hero a run for his money seems incomplete.
-NDTV
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