Inside the World of Bad Boys

Dragon | Director: Ashwath Marimuthu | Cast: Pradeep Ranganathan | Hindi version of Tamil film

Depicting youth culture is a tricky business. We’ve seen resounding flops in recent days with Junaid Khan’s Loveyapa and Ibrahim Ali Khan’s Nadaaniyan, that too when Loveyapa was based on the Tamil film Love Today (2022). Dragon is a new film starring Love Today’s Pradeep Ranganathan (as Ragavan) and it follows a plot every young male loser or bad boy will identify with. Ordinary looking boy, with a manic ability to disrupt life, with loving parents who try very hard, and a few good friends who stick by him through thick and thin. He meets a beau­tiful young woman and his life turns around, but slowly. It is the dream not only every young man who has even been stigmatised will love, but something his parents will love even more. Every fam­ily hopes their black sheep will become a beautiful lamb, but not everyone is so lucky. But unlike in the two recent Hindi films, these ideas are not merely set pieces featuring characters who are clearly alien to such lived experiences, but filmmakers who have observed the lives of others closely. Ragavan’s old mistakes come to haunt him on the cusp of his new life, and unlike in the mov­ies, he repeats his old ways of lying and cheating. Does he finally get redemption, and how? Dragon surprises you with its many twists, and leaves your emotions in a twirl, pretty much like Ragavan’s cigarette trick.

Ashwath Marimuthumovie reviewNandita DasPradeep RanganathanShoojit Sircar