Action Bonanza ‘Leo’ Has Its Cake And Eats It, Too

A film’s quality can’t be judged on how many times per minute its audience cheers—some of the vocal reactions were merely for familiar trailer moments—but when watching an action movie feels akin to experiencing Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (with its first Indian screenings as early as 4 a.m.), it’s a safe bet that mere recognition isn’t the only ingredient. Leo has no dearth of over-the-top fisticuffs, but it begins with some grisly murders (spoiler: a dog dies), setting up a gang of evil, idiosyncratic villains. Elsewhere, in the snowy town of Theog in Himachal Pradesh (which replaces Cronenberg’s fictitious Millbrook, Indiana), Kanagaraj introduces us to their polar opposite: Parthiban, or “Parthi” (Vijay), a hyper-capable animal rescuer, who juggles having to save hundreds of schoolchildren from a hyena without killing the bloodthirsty creature, a strict moral code of which he frequently reminds his teenage son Siddharth (Matthew Thomas), which also applies to human lives.

At the age of 49, Vijay slips comfortably into the role of an aging Indian action star (à la Ajith in Thunivu, Shah Rukh Khan in Jawan and Pathaan, and 68-year-old Kamal in Vikram), with the newly minted salt-and-pepper look he sported in Beast last year. It complements his kind and dignified demeanor with his teenage son, who assists him in this animal capture, a scene which Kanagaraj films with the bustling energy (and intense POV shots) of a video game climax. As the ruthless gangsters slowly make their way to Theog for unrelated reasons, the film lays out Parthi’s content domestic life with his wife Sathya (Trisha) and his young daughter Mathi, or “Chintu” (Iyal Nandakumar)—via an economically edited musical montage—in this Hindi-speaking hilltop in India’s north, far away from Parthi’s Tamil origins in the south, where Kanagaraj’s other “LCU” films are set.

At the age of 49, Vijay slips comfortably into the role of an aging Indian action star.

Still frame from "Leo"

When the villains’ path inadvertently leads them to Parthi’s café, the film’s transition from happy-go-lucky family melodrama to fierce hand-to-hand combat is seamless, though that’s also a bit of a problem. Like with the hyena capture, watching Parthi dispense with violent goons in creative ways—chairs and napkin holders become key elements in this fight—is enough to make even the most hardened viewers giddy with delight. But when his daughter is placed in immediate danger, he calls on some sort of buried instinct and guns them down with ease, accuracy, and heartless ferocity. Vijay, in this moment, screams in anguish, further selling the idea that killing is a step too far, and that he’s terrified by this hidden or suppressed part of himself he appears to have accessed (he claims to have never held a gun in his life). But in terms of the film’s stylizations, and the way Kanagaraj’s swerving camera imbues each movement with impact and momentum, the line between “enjoyable” and “detestable” action is so razor thin as to be nonexistent.

In concept, this pokes a major hole in the story’s central dramatic tension, over the sudden emergence of some sort of violent memories or personality at odds with Parthi’s domestic bliss and his nonviolent credo. Whatever hints the movie has, of a conversation between different kinds of cinematic violence—that which leaves viewers voracious, and that which is wince-inducing—is largely moot, since Kanagaraj’s elevated approach to B-movie bone-crunches often flattens them into one and the same thing. However, Vijay makes this contradiction feel like the best of both worlds. His vulnerable performance, both as a man possessed by brutality in fleeting moments, and a man terrified by this brutality rising within him, keeps Leo firmly on track, as a story about the sins of past lives returning in the present.

Director Lokesh Kanagaraj’s "Leo" is inspired by David Cronenberg’s suspenseful psychological thriller "A History of Violence."

Still frame from "Leo"

Once Parthi becomes a local hero, news stories and photos of him reach every corner of the country, drawing the attention of a pair of older criminal kingpins, brothers Harold Das (Arjun) and Antony Das (Sanjay Dutt). They claim Parthi is actually the latter’s long lost son, Leo, a merciless mobster who disappeared 20 years ago, and as they make their way to Theog, a triumvirate of dangerous factions emerges. On one side, there’s the Das clan, drug smugglers whose beliefs skirt along the lines of the occult, and whose interest in Parthi (or “Leo”) is shrouded in mystery. On the other, there’s the vengeful family of the gangsters Parthi slew in his café. And at the center of it all is Leo, his family, and his well-armed friends on the local police force, rounding out the trio of groups with vested interests in Parthi’s safety and whereabouts, setting the stage for non-stop mayhem involving homemade weapons and deadly boobytraps.

The staging is always crystal clear, even in chaotic moments (at one point, Kanagaraj and cinematographer Manoj Paramahamsa make use of a sweeping drone shot through a cramped interior space), and even as part of its plot unfolds in flashback, it maintains a sense of urgency. Kanagaraj and screenwriters Rathna Kumar and Deeraj Vaidy push the twists, turns and revelations of Cronenberg’s film as far back into Leo’s runtime as possible, and while this often leads to a lack of dramatic clarity in some scenes (the “who” and “why” of it all), it allows us to spend time with a younger, more energetic version of Vijay, playing Leo 20 years in the past, when his connection to Parthi isn’t yet clear. It’s a double role of sorts, allowing Vijay to slip into a charismatic “evil cool,” and it also allows the actor to flesh out the contours of an entire dynamic with a woman from Leo’s past (a cameo best left unspoiled) through action and music alone, courtesy of composer Anirudh, who brings a charged electronic sensibility to the soundscape, with repeated vocal interludes of “Leo Das is a badass” (it’s charmingly juvenile).