DC review: Lokesh Kanagaraj tells a compelling tale in his acting debut

DC (Tamil) Lokesh Kanagaraj has an undeniable talent for making you fond of on-screen gangsters. He could do it as a director. He pulls it off again in his acting debut. Arun Matheswaran’s DC stars Lokesh as Das, a ‘rowdie’ with a hair-trigger temper. Das and his gang race against time and police to pull off a heist of sorts. The film also makes attempts to question how criminality is often described without the socio-economic contexts that create it. Das’ full name is Devadas. While DC is said to be loosely based on the classic novel Devadas, it mostly tells its own story. Neither author Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay nor Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who adapted the novel for the screen in 2018, could have imagined a retelling of Devadas with such an abundance of shoot-outs, but here we are. The film declares its stance almost immediately after the opening credits. It shows how police brutality is wilfully targeted at the working class. What it could have dialled down is turning this violence into spectacle.  Das is furious when he hears about the custodial murder of a poor farm worker. He goes on the warpath with the police, intending to defend the victim’s son. Lokesh portrays a traumatised hero with a mercurial personality. This is a man who prefers to live in his own head until the world violently pulls him back out. He responds with knives, guns, and his fists. The director-turned-actor offers a grounded performance that soon has you rooting for Das.  On the run, he meets an angry sex worker, Chandra (Wamiqa Gabbi). There are a few upsetting flaws in how DC portrays sex work, but it also tries really hard to flip regressive narratives and turn the spotlight on abuse and trafficking.  Das rescues Chandra, and she joins him on his mission. To give him credit, Das doesn’t waste his breath delivering magnanimously heroic lectures. He just kills traffickers and brothel owners with a look of pointed disgust and moves on.  At this point, most Kollywood directors would have giddily embraced the temptation to moralise about womanliness and ‘reforming’. Chandra, however, minces no words in describing the chain of accountability that forces children and women into sex work. It was never her choice, but the violence of powerful men that decided her life for her, she points out.  Wamiqa easily carries Chandra’s rage. While her victimhood isn’t erased, it shifts gears soon. She quickly learns how to use a gun. Like Das, she will shoot her way out of a corner if she has to. DC creates almost equal mass moments for her to exchange fire with brutal police forces and abusive men.  Where the film stumbles, however, is in how it chooses to interrogate regressive ideas about sex workers. Characters repeatedly refer to Chandra with a caste slur rooted in the sexual exploitation of Devadasi women. Each time, it’s Das, and not Chandra, who gets to correct their thinking. Mostly the correction is terminal. Yes, the word is still too commonly used. And yes, people should be shamed for using it. But to band it about repeatedly, while there is no Devadasi character to question it, leaves you deeply uncomfortable. How DC wins instead is that it has chosen to make a working-class man-turned-gangster and a sex worker its heroes, while mostly reserving its judgement for the powerful. This choice is all the more meaningful because the film stars one of Kollywood’s most bankable directors.  But what is really going to annoy Tamil Nadu’s ageing patrons of orthodoxy is that DC shows women characters smoking as a normal fact of life. If male heroes can light up, each time, after the exhausting labour of casual murder, why can’t a woman reach for a cigarette when a man is working her last nerve?  Anirudh Ravichandran’s score doesn’t overwhelm and tax your hearing as it has been doing in his recent films. Instead, the music feels tailored specifically for its scenes, staying in the background while giving the scene just the boost it requires.  Cinematographer Mukesh G and editor Prasanna GK fluidly weld together sweeping panoramic scenes and claustrophobic fight sequences.  Oddly, DC is rated 18+, though the violence and language aren’t significantly worse than most Indian mass movies. Arun Matheswaran keeps you curious until the last scene and asks many of the right questions along the way.  Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.