Several vigilante films have been made in Tamil cinema and almost every iconic classic in the list is directed by Shankar. PS Mithran’s Hero may perhaps join this list as the filmmaker takes a leaf out of Shankar’s magic recipe. Starring Sivakarthikeyan in the lead role as Sakthi, Hero is a family entertainer that keeps you engaged.
Sakthi is a forger helping students, unemployed people, and others with fake certificates. His partner in crime is Ink (Robo Shankar in his usual comical self). Sakthi also helps parents to get their children to book a college seat and earns a commission. The sequence were desperate parents seeking admission will strike a chord to the audience as providing the best education is an important duty for every mother and father.
Sakthi meets Meera (Kalyani Priyadarshan), a volunteer whom he falls for. However, their romance isn’t shown much and it is restrained to just a song and few humourous scenes. When Meera accuses him of his crimes, Sakthi justifies by speaking about corruption in the system with a brief flashback. However, Sakthi has a change of heart when he decides to truly help without money, Ivana – a sister-like-figure in his locality to secure college admission.
But things don’t go the way they plan. Sakthi comes across Ivana’s ‘master’ Sathyamoorthy (Arjun acting a similar role of the character Krishnamoorthy in 1993 hit flick, Gentleman). When Sathya explains Sakthi the difficulties of succeeding in India’s education system, his reasons are bound to make you leap with wolf whistles.
The dialogues are witty. It is absolutely clear that Mithran admires Shankar’s rags-to-riches/vigilante movies and it works wonders as Hero holds our hands with issues that plagues our nation from poor education, governance, injustice in legal bodies to lack of resources in villages. It sheds light on how a lack of creativity leaves us as job seekers rather than job creators.
Sakthi’s spirit breaks when his idea to change the system is stopped by Mahadev (Abhay Deol), a super-rich powerful man who thrives on halting creative people’s innovation. He hoards crores of money at colleges and lobotomies those who oppose him. As the movie reaches the climax, it becomes a cat and mouse game between Sakthi and Mahadev.
Though Mahadev gains upper-hand in many sequences, Sakthi gains limelight when he urges all parents to check their children’s rough notes to know their hidden creativity in a final showdown. With heart-pumping background music by Yuvan Shankar Raja, Hero is an immense entertainer worth watching with family.