Captain Miller (2024)

Spoiler Alert

Captain Miller suffers from the same fate that ultimately befalls every “auteur” director when they collaborate with a star. The sad thing is that, despite having an actor-star like Dhanush, whose fans probably don’t need the kind of mass moments that Vijay, Rajini or Ajith fans need, what we end up seeing is basically that. The sadder part is that the film actually had potential to become great due to its interesting ideas.

The film follows, Analeesan, named Miller in the British Indian Army, who being a low caste individual faces discrimination. Feeling that the respect the British gives is better than the insult of his own land, Eesan joins the army but a shocking event changes the course of his life.

An interesting scene in the film is the scene where, Eesan’s elder brother, played by ShivaRaj Kumar, reprimands him for thinking of joining the army when he himself is a freedom fighter. Eesan tells about how now they are under British, while before, they were under the control of the higher caste people.

But the British at least gives them some amount of respect, which their own people don’t give. This scene perfectly sets up the point of the film, wherein we understand why Eesan behaves the way that he does. And the subsequent scenes that follow establish that conflict between his anger at his own people for treating him bad but he is unable to fire at them when he is ordered to do so by his British Captain, during a non-violent protest. This incident affects him quite deeply and upon seeing the suicide of a friend due to the alleged above incident, Eesan goes and kills the captain who dismisses the suicide with disdain. From here starts Eesan’s journey as Miller.

The way this scene is shot is absolutely stunning and affecting. GVP’s brilliant score is able to manipulate the emotions in us while Arun Maatheswaran’s decision to shoot the scene as a silhouette places Eesan himself as a shadow of his own self, a dark man now, who tries to cleanse himself by trying to commit suicide, but is saved by a friend. This changes him into a vagabond eventually becoming a dacoit.

From here on, the screenplay seems to be affected by the “commercialisation/massification” of the story. We see a montage of Miller saving different people, looting from the Government and doing other anti-establishment activities. The pacing becomes too fast and coming from films like Saani Kaayidham and Rocky, which had far more relaxed and slower pacing, each event seems to be hurriedly told and doesn’t seem to leave an impact.

We learn that Eesan’s brother has died and the next moment we see Eesan becoming a dacoit. We see Eesan talking about settling somewhere out of country when we are intercepted by another subplot. Thus, the first half seems to go by quite fast, and at the interval point, I couldn’t even tell as to where the story was willing to go.

With the second half, we get a flashback featuring Eesan’s mother and brother and from there, the film becomes mainly an extended action block about protecting the villagers from the external forces. The problem is that they have a certain massiness which previous Arun Maatheswaran films didn’t have and also, unnecessary scenes are built up to have absolute zero payoff.

We see a big crate (named “Eagle”, a nod to Rocky) and in the end, he uses it not to kill the bad guys, but shoots it at a place which gives them temporary damage, rather than at the vehicle in which they escape. Or the scene where a big machine gun is shown, only to be used for killing a few captured British soldiers.

Also, it is inherently confusing as to whether Eesan feels any issues about killing many Indian soldiers randomly, while only at a crucial point, he spares a few Indian soldiers which has a certain payoff (coincidence, I think not). Also, we never really know what does Analeesan want? At one point he double crosses and steals an artifact, to be robbed, for himself. But then when he realises that the robbery has endangered the lives of his villagers, he comes back for them. But he himself tells in a previous scene that he doesn’t care for them anymore. What we don’t see is the conflict that I think something like Karnan did quite well.

In the second half, the action becomes repetitive and it also begins lazily including sudden and unexplained appearances of characters who had discarded by the narrative a long time ago. And the most irritating thing in the film is that one of the character’s death is what shaped Analeesan himself in the first place. But then this death is reversed for a cool and deus-ex mass moment and just ends. The final stretch of action itself has 3-4 slow-mo entry of Dhanush in the same style (smoke blowing, camera facing back or face).

Technically though, while not quite reaching to the heights of Rocky/Saani Kaayidham, CM has an interesting cinema-verité style, where Lars von Trier esque handheld is combined with wild focus racks, which particularly convey the discrimination faced by the people beautifully. A person in the same field of view, is not visible to us due to being out of focus. This simple choice used so beautifully, conveys the theme of discrimination perfectly.

A particularly beautiful scene is a scene where Eesan talks with a 19yr old girl, who is part of the dacoit group, about going far away from the place to somewhere safe and to get married and have children. When she points the alleged misogyny of the dialogue, he simply points out that she is cleaning a rifle when he is cleaning a cooking utensil.

If only the film had more of such beautiful scenes instead of the massification of action, we’d have gotten a great 3rd film from Arun Maatheswaran.