Captain movie review: Arya stars in a tiring monster movie

Early on, in Captain, you get a glimpse of how Vetriselvan (Arya) enjoys his life – he reads books on warfare while his teammates make merry. Vetri is not a party pooper; he just doesn’t like to drink. So what? He doesn’t like to dance. So what? He can fight like a dream who has a clear-cut plan and put himself in the line of fire. Can you do that? You don’t have to do that. I’m simply rambling here. Please, don’t mind me. I spent around two hours trying to untangle the key concepts of a sci-fi thriller.

Director Shakti Soundar Rajan gives you all these odd bits about Vetri in the first few minutes, and, yet, the hero’s personality comes across as nothing more than a paper towel. What this boils down to is that you won’t be able to care for him. Even when Vetri loses his friend in a terrible way, it won’t make you sad. Don’t get me wrong. This is ultimately a monster movie where the soldiers rely on guns and the monsters rely on their social network and intelligence. But the monsters should scare you and the soldiers should give you a feeling that they’re somehow going to raise the flag of victory.

It doesn’t happen. Oh, the monsters do scare you. They are grotesque creatures that climb trees and walls and rob the trespassers of their memories. But the people who fight against them strangely show no emotions on their faces. Why don’t they shout and raise hell when they encounter a ruthless monster that has been fancily named Minotaur? The creatures that are directly inspired by the Predator franchise, thankfully, do not get to narrate their own origin story.

While the inspiration itself can serve as a readymade platform for the battle it sets up between a team of highly trained fighters and unknown assailants, it cannot paint the frames exactly. That responsibility falls on Soundar Rajan’s shoulders and he grandly tosses it away. When Vetri and his gang of three other members are requested by Keerthi (Simran), a scientist, to help her with her research in a remote town in the North East, you think you’re going to be pushed into the thick of action finally. But you’ll be disappointed when you learn that they aren’t half as interested as you are in finding a solution to this problem.

There are many excellent qualities that are attached to the creatures. For instance, black spiders crawl out of their backs when they’re in trouble. And then, they crawl up the legs and backs of humans in order to control their minds. Isn’t that amazing? There’s even a fantastic scene where a spider breaks into a lab in which a creature is being monitored and rescues it. But the visual effects that are supposed to make the hair on your head stand are, unfortunately, mediocre. They don’t make the spider appear like a bloody villain. And the climactic portion that takes place underwater is equally mediocre.

Soundar Rajan is a genre filmmaker who likes taking the road less travelled, but if his experiments become forest fires, he’ll have to go back to the intersection and figure out the rest of his journey. His previous movie, Teddy (2021), was a snoozefest. And, although, Captain isn’t that boring, it’s tiring. The surprises, regarding the identity of Aishwarya Lekshmi’s character and the pocket of strength that gives Vetri an edge over the creatures, aren’t well-hidden really – the painkiller that he’s prescribed for an old injury helps him withstand a creature’s attack to an extent.

If you pay attention to the details, you can guess them both because you’ll have all the clues in your hand. What I don’t get is how Keerthi couldn’t see that. Shouldn’t scientists be sharp? She also fails on another account. She doesn’t know how a creature dies – or the method that can be used to kill it. Vetri is the guy who puts it all together at the end of the day. He must surely be obtaining a lot of information from the war books that he keeps reading.

Heroes can sacrifice their lives for the greater good. But it should come from a place of selflessness and not stupidity. Sometimes, the decisions that Vetri takes are harmful (to himself), but he doesn’t even spend a moment to think of the outcomes. It’s sad to see Arya in a movie that puts him front and centre and hands him deadly weapons and, in return, takes away his ability to display worry and wonder.

Captain is a monsoon without the thunder and showers.

Karthik Keramalu is a writer. His works have been published in The Bombay Review, The Quint, Deccan Herald and Film Companion, among others. 

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