There is a specific sound a film projector makes when the take-up reel is slightly warped, a metallic clicking that syncs up with nobody’s heartbeat in particular, and the projection booth at my local multiplex still makes that noise during matinees because the theater owners won't spend the money on digital conversions that actually work without stuttering. It was rattling during the opening titles of Retro too, which felt either like an accidental piece of site-specific installation art or just plain old poor maintenance, though I am leaning toward the latter because the popcorn was cold and nobody behind the counter cared enough to look me in the eye when I bought my ticket. That rattle stayed in my head for the first twenty minutes, competing with a brass-heavy theme song that sounded suspiciously like it had been lifted from a forgotten mid-nineties action thriller starring Vinod Khanna, or maybe one of those weirdly glossy mid-budget bollywood movies that nobody remembers until they pop up on cable at three in the morning.

Suriya walks into the frame about ten minutes in wearing a leather jacket that has clearly been tailored by someone who hates the human shoulder, looking tired in that specific way actors do when they have spent six months on a strict protein diet and zero carbohydrates. He doesn't get a grand entrance with slow motion dust motes or a low-angle shot making him look like a deity carved from teakwood, which is refreshing for a star of his wattage, but he also doesn't do very much with his hands during the dialogue scenes. He keeps them shoved deep into those awkward pockets, clutching what looks like a pack of crushed cigarettes or a heavy lighter, and he lets his co-stars do all the heavy lifting while he just stares off into the middle distance with a flat, non-committal expression that isn't quite brooding and isn't quite bored. When he finally speaks, his voice is pitched lower than usual, almost a mumble that forces you to lean forward in your seat even when the sound design is booming at ear-splitting levels, and if I am honest, I missed the sheer manic energy he brought to Soorarai Pottru because this quiet, grinding gear-shift feels like an actor trying to prove something to a jury.

The direction by whoever was running the monitor on the day they shot the warehouse sequence—the credits move too fast to keep track of the second unit names—leans heavily into long, unbroken takes that drag on just long enough for you to notice the boom mic dipping into the top corner of the frame. It dips twice during a tense conversation between Prakash Raj and Nasser, both veterans who can chew scenery with their eyes closed, yet the editor refused to cut away to a wider establishing shot, trapping us in a tight two-shot where Nasser's false mustache looks like it's peeling away from his upper lip due to the humidity. That mustache drove me crazy for the entire second act because it never quite matched the lighting of the rest of his face, glowing slightly under the harsh tungsten lamps like a piece of Scotch tape left too long in the sun. It's a small thing, but it bugged me more than the plot holes, which are standard-issue for this genre and involve a briefcase full of microfilm that nobody seems to actually care about once the fistfights start.

Pooja Hegde shows up as the obligatory love interest who also happens to be a forensic accountant with a grudge against the local municipal corporation, and she delivers her exposition dumps with the hurried breathlessness of someone trying to catch the last local train out of the suburbs. She shares zero chemistry with Suriya, not because they are bad actors individually, but because the script gives them scenes where they talk exclusively about zoning laws and municipal bonds while standing three feet apart in a poorly ventilated office. They look like two strangers waiting for an elevator that is taking way too long to arrive from the top floor. Joju George pops up later as the corrupt union boss with a penchant for eating boiled eggs during tense interrogations, and he is the only person on screen who seems to realize he is in a pulpy crime drama rather than a prestige television miniseries about the decline of the manufacturing sector. He spits eggshell fragments onto the table while threatening to break Suriya's kneecaps, and for about five glorious minutes, the film actually generates a pulse instead of just humming along on fumes.

Jayaram is wasted in a role that requires him to stand behind a massive mahogany desk, nod sagely at whatever ridiculous plan Suriya has just proposed, and occasionally look through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that he takes off and cleans with a silk handkerchief whenever the scene runs out of dialogue. It is the kind of performance you could phone in from a regional airport lounge using an iPhone with a cracked screen, and I suspect he spent all of two days on the set before collecting his check and heading off to shoot a family comedy in Kerala. Vidhu, on the other hand, tries to inject some genuine menace into the proceedings as the primary henchman who doesn't use guns because he prefers a heavy wrench, but the sound effects editor gave every single swing of that wrench the exact same cartoonish metal-clang sample, which kills any sense of visceral danger after the fourth time you hear it.

Cinematographer Ravi Varman—or someone mimicking his color palette very closely—drowns every single interior in a sickly amber wash that makes even the daylight scenes look like they were shot inside a jar of stale honey, and after two hours of it, your eyes start begging for a patch of pure white or a splash of cold blue. It is a suffocating visual strategy that works nicely for the rainy night sequences involving rusted shipping containers and mud-splattered Ambassadors, but it wears out its welcome long before the intermission hits. The soundtrack by the lesser-known composer in the credits relies entirely on a driving synth bassline that throbs away in the background of every single scene, whether characters are running across a rooftop or sitting in a quiet library discussing the price of copper wire, making it impossible to gauge the emotional temperature of any given moment because the music is always telling you that the world is about to end.

There is a sequence midway through where Suriya drives an old Premier Padmini through a crowded marketplace in Mysore, and the camera work there is genuinely thrilling, bouncing around the cabin with a handheld urgency that recalls the best bits of Ram Gopal Varma's early crime films before he lost the plot entirely. The stunt coordinators didn't use safety wires for the pedestrians diving out of the way of the grille, or at least it didn't look like they did, and that raw, reckless energy is what keeps you from walking out during the sluggish middle forty minutes where everyone sits around talking about land acquisition permits. Hindi films used to do this kind of gritty underworld sprawl with a bit more swagger, but regional cinema has mostly taken over the gritty crime beat these days, often substituting genuine grit with endless slow-motion shots of dust settling on broken glass.

Thematic ambitions hover around the edges of the narrative like dust motes in a shaft of weak sunlight, suggesting a larger commentary on how industrial displacement ruins working-class families, but the script chickens out every time it gets close to making a real point about corporate greed. Instead of following through on the union struggles of the men who built the factories, it pivots back to a tedious revenge plot involving Suriya's father and a gold watch with a cracked crystal, which is about as cliché as it gets in this part of the world. By the time the final confrontation rolls around in an abandoned warehouse filled with stacked bags of fertilizer that smell like damp earth even through the screen, you stopped caring who owns the land or who stole the microfilm because the characters have all turned into walking chess pieces being moved around by a director who ran out of ideas around reel four.

The ending doesn't resolve anything so much as it simply stops, cutting to black on a close-up of Suriya's boots as he steps into a puddle, leaving the fate of the municipal corporation and the forensic accountant completely up in the air while the credits roll in absolute silence because the projectionist apparently went out for a smoke break. It is an abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion that feels less like a bold artistic choice and more like someone realized they were over budget and just pulled the plug on the generator, which sums up the entire viewing experience quite nicely.