Thanal

Thanal Movie Synopsis: An outsider with a grudge targets cops tied to a past encounter, and a rookie lured into his sewer-linked heist tries to shut it down.

Thanal Movie Review: Thanal is most alive when it sticks to the chase and least convincing when it stops to explain itself. It opens with a 2016 police encounter that wipes a gang of bank robbers; a year later, a stranger (Ashwin) hunts down those officers. On his first night in uniform, a recruit (Atharvaa) chases one of his underlings from a manhole into a deserted housing site, loses colleagues, and uncovers a sewer-routed multi-bank heist, realising he was bait. With Anu (Lavanya) taken as leverage, the revenge circles back to a mining land grab and police complicity.

The film wants urgency from the first frame, yet the opening encounter is staged in a way that drains belief. The blocking is slack, the reactions feel performed rather than lived, and the shock never lands. A little later, an all-powerful antagonist strolls through a squad of trained cops. Not impossible in a movie, but here it plays like ritual: one-man army, others wait their turn, a mid-fight monologue. Style points over stakes.

That inconsistency haunts the action grammar. Fights pause so people can talk. Exposition barges into tense beats. The film keeps asking for buy-in while undercutting the make-believe. The villain’s grievance has real-world weight on paper, but the writing tries to launder a terrorist playbook into tragic inevitability without doing the character work. It wants you to feel the burn and forgive the arson in the same breath.

Where Thanal finds its groove is when the cops get stuck in the deserted housing board sprawl. The tight corridors and the way night swallows sightlines provide a proper stage for a chase film. Production design and staging do the heavy lifting. Atharvaa has always had the looks and chops, and he brings a steady presence here. Ashwin has the glare and command, even if the script does not back him with a persuasive arc. Lavanya is stuck in utility mode. Shah Ra chips in with buddy beats that land cleanly, mostly because the comedy is kept on a short leash. Lakshmi Priya, as the wary local who shelters the survivors, adds texture in a few scenes.

Craft is a mixed bag. The cinematography enjoys the hard edges of the maze and the grime of the underground. The romance detour exists because habit says so. The moral calculus is explained when it should be felt. There is a sharper thriller hiding inside this one. The blueprint is right there in the tunnels: keep it focused, keep it urgent, and stop stopping to explain. When Thanal runs, you lean in. When it reasons, you drift.

By Abhinav Subramanian