Dulqer Salmaan who is known for his riveting and impactful performances is on a high scoring hits like Mahanati, Sitaramam and Lucky Bhaskar. He is now coming up with the film Kaantha under the direction of Selvamani Selvaraj. The film is releasing in various languages. Rana who has penchant to support good films collaborated with Dulqer Salmaan to bankroll the project. The film is releasing on 14 November 2025. Kaantha OTT rights have been bagged by OTT giant Netflix. Let us see how the film impressed movie lovers.
Kaantha story revolves around the ego clashes between as successful actor and his mentor director and where this leads to. Director Ayya (Samuthirakhani) plans a horror film on his mother naming it Shaantha with star actor TK.Mahadevan (Dulqer Salmaan), who mentored him before they fell apart due to ego clashes.
Their ego clashes already brought the project to halt on numerous occasions, but this time Ayya is hellbent as he found a new girl Kumari (Bhagyasri Borse), whom he felt would do justice to the lead role. With the passage of time during the shoot, shocking incidents happen.
Where this leads to and what role Inspector Phoenix Devaraj (Rana), Mahadevan's wife Devi (Gahatyri Devi),his father in law, media baron (Nizhalgal ravi), producer and owner of Modern Studios, Martin (Ravindra Vijay) form rest of the developments.
Dulquer Salmaan once again showed how talented an actor he is. He stunned all with his stellar performance. In almost all the scenes, he cast a magic spell and elevated them to the core. As usual, he delivered dialogues in an impressive manner and emoted well. In many scenes, he spoke with his eyes only and showed variations in his emotions and expressions.
Samuthirakhani used his experience and came up with a captivating performance. He showed good aggression and intensity in the role of a director. He delivered dialogues with ease and powerful impact.
Bhagyashri Borse, who was confined to glamour roles until now, got a role to showcase her acting talent. She performed well and came up with good expressions and emotions. Her body language is good and made an impression. Gayatri Devi did well in the role of Dulqer's wife.
Rana Daggubati played the powerful role of a police and he came up with authoritative performance. He made an impact on the big screen. But at times he became loud and overboard. Ravindra Vijay, Nizhalgal Ravi, Bijesh Nagesh and others performed according to their roles.
The story of Kaantha is penned by Selvamani Selvaraj. The story is based on real-life incidents and he stuck true to the developments without going for commercial elements.
He starts the narration in an interesting manner, showing the clashes between the director and the actor. He showed the shooting of scenes in the sets in the studio in a realistic way. The first half sails off smoothly with the director highlighting the ego clashes, blossoming of romance before the surprising twist at the interval.
The second half takes a different route with investigation and story and narration picking up pace. The pre climax is good and climax turns emotional but the runup to the climax slows down. The story turns out to be simpple with ego clashes between the actor and director and Selvamani Selvaraj concentrating on the naunces of the shooting and how their egos impacted the shoot.
After a point of time, one gets a feeling that the director ran out of ideas and this is event in few scenes that gave a repetitive feel. The climax is dragged to a point testing the patience of the viewers. Screenplay turns out to be a roller coaster ride. At times it is racy and at times it is tardy.
Llewellyn Anthony Gonsalvez's is sleek in the first half but in the second half few scenes repeated which slowed the pace of the narration.
The Cinematography of Dani Sanchez Lopez is natural and realistic. He showed the scenes of 1950s quite well using the colour combinations and camera angles perfectly giving the retro look.
The songs tuned by Jhanu Chanter are situational and connect chords emotionally. The background score is rendered by Jakes Bejoy and he took viewers into the storyline. The background music elevated the scenes and added value to the narration. Dialogues are realistic and powerful and production values are grand.
Altogether, Kaantha turns out to be slow but interesting biopic. Selvamani Selvaraj's story is quite predictable and offered nothing new. There is one small twist and so director spent most of the time, showing the nitty gritties of the shooting and other elements. The conflict point is very small and so he highlighted the ego clashes through scenes and dialogues. He got the optimum perfomrances from Dulqer Salmaan and others and the techincal values are top notch. The slow pace and predictability marred the proceedings. A little finetuning of the script and racy screenplay would have added value to the final output. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 2.25 for Kaantha.