Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Michael James ★★★★

  Bala’s raw treatment, Yuvan’s mesmerizing music and the phenomenal rustic performances of Suriya-Raj Kiran, keep the dark drama engaging throughout. The climax was damn haunting. Laila and karunas were solid in their given roles and provide the much needed lighthearted breaks. On the whole, don’t  miss out on this gripping watch.

• 

  Review by chinmay ★★★★½

  (i’ve been wanting to write a piece on bala and the role his filmography serves as a microcosm of the ideological displacement of a significant portion of popular tamil cinema during the aughts since i was introduced to his work through naan kadavul but i figured it would perhaps be worth waiting until i reached a greater level of familiarity w tamil cinema and its history as a collective whole before doing so. now that i’ve achieved that to some extent, i think nandha is as good of a film as any to use as a means of appropriately conveying my thoughts):

  unlike the hulking beast that is popular hindi cinema and the manner in which its interests re: the…

• 

  Review by ash ★★★ 4

  The world that bala introduces is very grey, most of the people are fucked up in their own ways left with no moral values or whatsoever.

  Another bala movie weighed down from reaching its full tragic potential by a romantic track.

  Getting familiar with his game, seems like he first writes for the tragic/ shocking ending and fills his way till there. Well can't expect care or nuanced writing of childhood trauma or anything here because bala's intentions are to make it as tragic as possible rather than addressing the issues, so there's no point in looking at it in a reformed perspective.

  Great performance by suriya tho. Those montages that feature him as a kid and as an adult…

• 

  Review by sydney ★★★★★ 1

  floored by this - heartbreaking music, stunning photography that is always both beautiful and unsettling, bending traditional technique for pure emotional weight, like a shot where the camera pans across a dark space full of tables whose overhead lights are the only light source, looking for someone, passing by a table and then doing a double take and going back. it has a jolt of suspense and immediacy, this sort of action that should only be performed by a human, not a camera, that gives the whole movie its devastating effect. the idea of questioning if anyone deserves to die and who deserves to decide is obviously nothing new, but this message filtered through suriya's performance takes on new facets.…

• 

  Review by notgoodreviews ★★★½ 5

  i feel like i didn't watch the actual movie because its apparently three hours long, and the version i saw on amazon prime is only two hours long?? either way, that ending properly fucked me up. it's perfect, and so so cruel. a movie with no clear answers, no good or evil, it just leaves you feeling a little sick by the end. my main issue is that the father-son relationship didn't work for me and tbh it kinda distracted from the main, central hook of the movie - this storyline felt very ordinary, and was less focused on suriya's insane performance and his deeply troubled character than the reverse amma sentiment and the dilemma as to whether you can…

• 

  Review by Kriti ★★★★½

  Wanting to be loved but being feared instead

• 

  Review by NesarajK ★★★★½

  Longing for maternal tenderness 💔

  "In this world, whenever evil overpowers good, I'll take an incarnation. We both are nothing but those incarnations."

  Love Bala with all my heart

• 

  Review by evilngk ★★★★★ 5

  i keep asking myself whether i'm misremembering this film's length, since a few users have listed their runtime as 3 hours, while the times i caught it on tv as a child had it shorter, as is my print now on rewatch coming in at around 2 hours. i recognise a few portions trimmed here and there, but a whole hour? have i or have i not seen the full film?? idk.. it's incredibly frustrating cos once again, here is a rant to say we are not preserving our films at all. this isn't even old. released at the turn of the new millennium and all it takes for a tamil film to lose itself and be near impossible to…

• 

  Review by Jessie_alt ★★★★½

  Extra marks for Yuvan's finest soundtrack

• 

  Review by Vicky R ★★★★

  Suriya's career breakthrough performance! He completely transforms himself into the character Nandha. Great performance from the entire cast. U1's songs were good. Bala's tragic ending is Heartbreaking and Dark🌚.

• 

  Review by Varghese

  Maybe it was only me but after Sethu,this felt like a big step down despite the stellar performances by the cast.

• 

  Review by Niki ★★★

  Going in to this movie, I knew that I’ve never really been a fan of Bala’s films that I’ve seen. But I still wanted to give Nandha a shot because of Suriya and I actually ended up liking it more than I expected to. The movie felt very choppy and like it was missing a lot of character development so I’m assuming that the talk of an orginal 3hr cut is true. This was a decent watch but I feel like I would have liked it even more if I was able to watch the full movie.