Baththa Is on Netflix From October 29, and Vijay Sethupathi's Gangster Comedy Deserved a Better Run

Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Baththa arrives on Netflix on October 29 in Tamil and in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam dubs, and it is the film I would push on anyone who has only seen Vijay Sethupathi in Jawan or Maharaja. Balaji Tharaneetharan directs, the man who made Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom, and this is in that register: a small premise, a lot of warmth, and a lead who disappears into it.

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Sethupathi plays a gangster whose life is upended when a small boy ends up in his care, and the film is about the unravelling of a hard man by a child who is not impressed by him. The reports cannot agree on whether the boy is eight or ten, which tells you something about how little the plot matters next to the performances. The Hollywood Reporter India called it a delightful unravelling, and that is the right word.

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At the box office it did around 33 crore worldwide, which some outlets called a sleeper hit and others called a struggle. It was both. The reviews were good, the word of mouth was good, and it still could not hold screens against the bigger October releases. That is the kind of film streaming exists for.

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Sethupathi is the draw but the film works because Tharaneetharan refuses to make the gangster a monster or a saint. He is a tired man who is good at a bad job, and the boy sees through him in about ten minutes. The humour comes from the gap between how scary he is supposed to be and how little anyone in his own house fears him.

Photo: Bryce Edwards, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

If you have Netflix and ninety spare minutes this week, this is my pick over most of what the service is pushing. Did you catch it in cinemas, or is this your first chance?