No sports movie is just about the sport itself. The sport is merely a setting to ground an allegory in service of its protagonist’s journey of ups and downs.
Boxing as a sport tends to attract folks from the margins: the poor, the immigrants, and the minority communities. Ranjith prods more at class than caste divisions here. Because these boxers are all broken and bruised working-class men who see the ropy confines of the ring as their only chance for glory and upward mobility.
In his previous films Kaala and Kabali, Ranjith transported us to Mumbai and Malaysia (respectively). Now, we’re back in the familiar terrain of North Madras. And like his second film Madras, two warring factions are keen to establish their supremacy in the region. There, the conflict centred around a wall. Here, it centres around a boxing legacy with colonial roots. As Pasupathy’s coach Rangan notes, the boxing subculture in North Madras split into many clans post-independence. Chief among them are…
