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Director-turned-actor: Lokesh Kanagaraj Cast: Lokesh Kanagaraj, Wamiqa Gabbi, Sanjana Krishnamoorthy Music: Anirudh Ravichander
By Bollywoodwallah
There is a seductive myth in cinema that mastery of the craft is transferable — that a filmmaker who commands the frame can just as easily command it from within. DC arrives as a two-and-a-half-hour rebuttal to that myth. Lokesh Kanagaraj, one of the most kinetic storytellers of his generation behind the camera, steps in front of it — and the result is a tedious, derivative misfire that squanders both his reputation and our patience.
The Vanishing Act of a Leading Man
Let it be said plainly: Kanagaraj the actor does no favours to Kanagaraj the brand. His performance operates on a single, wooden expression — deployed in romance, rage, grief, and gunfire alike — that never once flickers into life across the runtime. The styling compounds the damage; unkempt and curiously devoid of visual polish, his screen presence lacks the charisma the material desperately needs its centre of gravity to possess. What should have been a star-is-born moment instead plays as an endurance test, and a stark reminder that some of cinema’s finest minds are finest precisely because they stay behind the lens.
A Screenplay Running in Circles
The writing offers its lead no lifeline. DC’s plot is essentially one loop played on repeat: the law pursues, apprehends, loses, and re-engages Kanagaraj’s protagonist — again, and again, and again. With no thematic undercurrent or structural escalation to justify the cycle, the film collapses into a procession of ultra-violent set-pieces that mistake bloodshed for tension. There is no choreographic wit here, no stakes, no invention — just carnage as filler. The Hindi dialogue writing fares no better, plodding along without a single line of punch, poetry, or theatrical flair. In a film this loud, the silence of memorable writing is deafening.
The Ensemble: One Misstep, One Missed Opportunity
Wamiqa Gabbi brings undeniable visual charm to the frame but never finds her character’s pitch, sliding into jarring overacting that clashes awkwardly against her leading man’s emotional flatline — two performances in the same film, seemingly from two different ones.
The genuine tragedy is Sanjana Krishnamoorthy. In her limited screen time, she is the film’s only pulse — warm, subtly graceful, and textured in a way nothing around her is. And then, inexplicably, the screenplay discards her, curtailing its most compelling performer far too early. A film drowning in structural deficiencies threw away its one lifeboat.
Anirudh: The Lone Survivor
If anything walks out of DC unscathed, it is Anirudh Ravichander’s score. His infectious, already-viral melodic motifs supply the film’s only genuine jolts of vitality. Yet even this triumph is mishandled — a track that cries out for a tender, romantic canvas is instead slapped over chaotic action, creating a bewildering disconnect between the elegance in our ears and the clutter on our screens. When a director cannot serve his own composer, the diagnosis is complete.
The Verdict
DC is a hollow exercise in vanity — a miscalculated crossover from a filmmaker who mistook the spotlight for a natural habitat. It is repetitive where it should be propulsive, violent where it should be tense, and vacant where it should be magnetic. For admirers of Lokesh Kanagaraj’s directorial genius, this is a painful watch; for the industry, a cautionary tale.
The camera loves Lokesh Kanagaraj. It just prefers him on the other side of it.
