Tamil films are a different beast altogether when it comes to action films in their genre. Tamil films always attempt to stand out because they are constantly faced with high-budget Telugu films and massy films from the Kannada industry. Tamil action films always try to be different from the last movie we see; a new style of action or direction has been attempted by filmmakers lately, which is refreshing to watch. “Raangi,” you can say, comes close to being a decent action film and maybe gets lost in the crowd. Released on the big screen on the 22nd December 2022, this is a Tamil language film directed by M. Saravanan, now available on Netflix. “Raangi” is a story of a brave journalist who is not afraid of questioning the status quo and is ready to face the consequences if she is proven wrong. A no-nonsense woman who is always ready to take things into her hand and change the system slowly and steadily.
Spoilers Ahead
Thaiyal Nayagi’s Tryst With The Law And Order
The movie begins with a montage of Libya which is plagued by terrorism and rebellious activities conducted by the late president, Muammar Gaddafi’s supporters, who are creating havoc all around the country trying to save their nation from brutal American forces. Libya has been wracked with civil war since the downfall of its long-serving dictator, who was killed by the people of Libya itself. Back in Tamil Nadu, a bunch of police officers are tackling hitmen who were hired to kill a policeman. On interrogation, the men claimed they received a message from Libya to kill the said policeman, and they were just following the orders. These men are instantly killed by the officers. These police officers are ruthless when it comes to handling criminals, and they showcase that once they catch these gunmen. Back in Chennai, as Thaiyal Nayagi is about to leave work, she is distressed about some news she came across; that’s when she is taken into custody jointly by CBI and FBI, who want to question her about a certain gentleman who she is in communication with through Facebook, and since it is possible that man is a terrorist who the FBI wants to catch. Thaiyal is shocked by the turn of events because she least expected to be arrested by the agencies over chatting with someone online. But she is confident that she will not be harmed, and she is smart enough to know how to respond to these investigation officers without letting them get into her head.
As the investigation begins, viewers get to see Thaiyal Nayagi, the protagonist, who is a fearless journalist, always questioning the existing conditions of politics, legislature, and judiciary. She strongly believes all of them only tackle the obvious matters and never dig deep into anything uncomfortable, and this is the case with journalism as well. Journalism currently, too, does not go the extra mile to give us news that matters; they give us news journalists think people deserve, which is sensationalistic ratings-driven news. Thaiyal tries to be different from all the above and wants to make a difference for the younger generation, which includes her niece, who looks up to her. Thaiyal comes from a journalistic background where her father was a well-known person in the same field, but her brother chose to be a part of “yellow journalism,” which publishes only speculation and rumors and never a news story. Thaiyal is proud of where she has reached so far, and she will not apologize for who she is. At one instance, during a routine check-up conducted by the police on pedestrians and drivers on the road, she is verbally harassed by a police officer, who starts moral policing her on being out at night at this odd hour when she was just heading home after work. Thaiyal records the conversation and leaks the video through the online news portal for which she works. The said police officer is rattled, but he doesn’t back down, and he starts threatening her repeatedly, which includes sending goons to her place. Thaiyal is not afraid of men like the said police officer. He comes across as a deeply insecure, misogynistic man who believes no matter how bold women are; men will always remain superior. Thaiyal is not afraid of asking questions and knowing she is right. She is on good terms with her niece Sushmita while not on such good terms with her brother and sister-in-law, even though they live in the same household. Thaiyal lives upstairs, while her brother and his family live downstairs. One day her brother approaches her with a life-threatening situation, where he is sent compromising videos that he claims are of his daughter from a guy who threatens to leak the video. Distressed about how to handle the situation, Thaiyal takes it upon herself to solve the matter. She takes her niece Sushmita with her to meet the said guy. He claims Sushmita sent him the video of herself on Facebook when he asked her for it. Sushmita is not aware of what happened, as she is not included in the conversation; Sushmita claims she was never on Facebook to begin with. That’s when Thaiyal realizes someone used her nieces’ name and picture to start a fake profile in Sushmita’s name, and speak to this guy who has the video. Thaiyal is shaken by the kind of conversation guys are into and how they relentlessly pursue women only for some physical gratification and pleasure. She realizes the woman in the video is not her niece but someone else. Thaiyal just must find out who.
‘Raangi’ Ending Explained – Do Sushmita And Aalim Finally Get To See One Another?
Thaiyal suspects that this is the handiwork of one of Sushmita’s friends from school, and she offers to meet all of them for a talk. She figures out who the friend is and confronts the girl, Neha, rather nicely on why she is using Sushmita’s picture and name and running a Facebook profile. The girl tearfully admits that she does not consider herself to meet standards of beauty prescribed to her by society in general. She created a fake account using Sushmita’s picture and name just to attract some male attention, which she liked. The girl’s dilemma is understandable because the beauty standards in the country are broken, wherein girls who don’t meet the standards are subjected to constant ridicule and are talked down to by people around them, to the point a girl or a boy loses confidence. This led to the girl taking extreme steps just for some validation from social media. Thaiyal makes it clear that what Neha is pursuing is wrong and dangerous, for she should be concentrating on her studies and becoming an independent woman rather than worrying about what the world thinks of her. For a few seconds of validation, she is not only ruining herself for the future, but she is putting Sushmita’s life in jeopardy too. Thaiyal does not make Neha feel guilty but rather makes her understand that social media is a rabbit hole of the messiest of things that happen to both men and women, and Neha should probably control her social media habits and not seek any validation from random people but from those who love her for who she is. This is a social commentary on how youngsters go online only to look for approval from strangers while forgetting the people around them who love them for who they are and do not expect them to change a bit.
Thaiyal requests her ID and password so that she can deactivate the account. Neha willingly gives away the information because she trusts Thaiyal. She has always been an inspiration for many young girls, especially Neha and Sushmita. She trusts Thaiyal completely to handle the situation from here. As Thaiyal opens the account, she is soon inundated with plenty of messages from men of every age group messaging Neha as Sushmita, asking for obscene videos and indulging in physical pleasure with them. Thaiyal is disgusted by the thought of men approaching girls as young as Neha and Sushmita just to bring out their perversion without worrying about the consequences of it. Under the pretext of the name Sushmita, she asks all the men to meet at a room in the hotel at the same time. She lectures all of them on what they do is beyond reprimandable, and they need to understand the legal ramifications of what they do and how it mentally affects girls in their late teens. Not sure what was the point of holding a gathering of men who are perverts, for men like them never learn, and they will just go back to harassing other women. No goodwill lecture works on men who just want to be twisted. As Thaiyal deletes chats from the Facebook messenger one by one, a message from someone named Aalim intrigues her. How he speaks to her makes Thaiyal conclude that he and Neha have had genuine one-to-one over the years. There is always a gut feeling or an instinct a woman feels when she is conversing with a man, online or offline; they can sense if the man has good intentions or not, which usually works in a woman’s favor. Thaiyal senses Aalim is not a bad person; the conversation seems more about life in general and does not digress to physical acts of affection. Thaiyal starts conversing with Aalim as Sushmita.
Aalim turns out to be a real-life young boy who is branded a terrorist by the world, but he considers himself to be a rebel who is fighting for his cause, which is his country. Aalim is very much in love with Sushmita, but he has not said the words yet to Sushmita. He still thinks he is chatting with Sushmita and opens his worldview to her so that she can understand where his motivation to fight for his country comes from. He starts sharing the photos of his location with her, and within hours there is news of American oil company employees being targeted and killed by Libyan terrorists. Aalim sends messages in Arabic, which are translated into Tamil for Thaiyal, who is responding as Sushmita. Aalim is on the run with his rebel group, but he always finds time to converse with Sushmita. At one point, he also talks about why he chose to become a rebel, and he is not happy with him being branded a terrorist. He believes he and his group will fight to bring justice for the people who were wronged in the name of political turmoil. and he would do anything to get their rights back. Thaiyal is moved by Aalim’s words and his determination to get his rights back by demanding them, not asking for them. Thaiyal also learns about the history of Libya and is saddened to know the amount of turmoil that country has been through in the fight between the West’s greed for oil and how much their exploitation has ruined the nation. Aalim, though he is a person who has taken up arms to fight for his rights, is a character with shades of gray, for you sympathize with him after he justifies his actions, but one also wonders if taking up arms is the only definite solution. Knowing the situation Thaiyal is falling in, she starts admiring him, a 17-year-old boy, and she knows for a fact Aalim loves the Sushmita he is talking to, hoping the woman on the other side is a 16-year-old girl too.
Aalim at one point, also shares a picture of a Tamil Nadu-based Indian Union Minister meeting with the rebel group. Thaiyal uploads the picture to her news portal, and it goes viral. The Union Minister was meeting with an extremist group to get a share of oil from Libya, and in return, he reinvested the profit into the rebel group’s work of forming a groundwork in India. The minister is caught red-handed, and unfortunately, the Union Minister is killed in a plane crash. It is implied that the minister was killed on the orders of the central government to save face and not to be branded as supporting Islamic terror groups. Aalim does not realize that his photo was leaked by Thaiyal herself and blames it on the hacking of her profile. Thaiyal creates a new profile, as does Aalim, and they start conversing again. To understand Aalim’s reach, Thaiyal conveys to him that the police officer who was harassing her previously is again using his power with the hope that she will succumb to his scare tactics. The police are taking her to the station to file a complaint. But on reaching the police station, two gunmen come by and kill the said police officer and his subordinates. Thaiyal is again shocked to see the power Aalim has and the number of connections he has with hitmen in India for them to be able to finish this job just because of a message sent by Aalim.
Thaiyal, as Sushmita, feels bad for leading a 17-year-old boy on and goes incommunicado. Once she opens the messenger account a few days later, she comes across plenty of messages from Aalim stating that he is in town to talk to Sushmita and convince her to start conversing with him again. Thaiyal is disturbed by this news, and she heads to see Sushmita warn her about Aalim’s situation when she is arrested by the FBI and CBI. Thaiyal, until this point, had not informed Sushmita or her parents about Neha’s fake profile, which she took over, or her conversations with Aalim. Thaiyal believes she can handle the situation and not let Sushmita get dragged into these unpleasant circumstances unnecessarily. The whole point of Thaiyal continuing to speak to Aalim is to understand the worldview of a boy who has grown up seeing conflict, unlike Thaiyal and Sushmita, who have grown up with their basic needs being fulfilled and a life of privilege.
Thaiyal being arrested is one of the first scenes of the film, and this connects the dots with the fact that Thaiyal was being tracked by the local authorities for speaking to a wanted terrorist, and they are forcing her to ask him about Libya, his whereabouts, and possibly about meeting her in India or Libya. Thaiyal is forced to tell him she loves him, and his response is positive. Though he says he cannot come to India to meet her, Thaiyal, as Sushmita lets him know that she will be visiting Libya just to meet him. As the FBI and CBI prepare for the big trip to Libya to capture Aalim, Thaiyal is riddled with guilt for involving the innocent and uninformed Sushmita, who will be used as bait to capture Aalim. Thaiyal knows she is powerless at this point, and she won’t be able to convey that this is a trap set by the Americans and Indian agencies to capture him. Thaiyal tries to bring in the HRO (Human Rights Organization), but her plans fail. They set up the meeting of Sushmita with Aalim at a local café, but Aalim’s principal chief of the rebel group attacked the café, which was surrounded by men from the FBI, with Sushmita sitting not that far away from Thaiyal. The rebel group attacked the café with the hope of killing the FBI men and Sushmita, who brought them here, and under the impression that Sushmita laid the trap for them to get exposed and killed. Aalim comes to rescue his chief, and a firefight ensues between the American forces and the rebel group, which Thaiyal and Sushmita dodge with luck on their side. As one by one, rebels are killed by the American forces, Aalim is the only one left alive. To get this attention, they plan to shoot Sushmita when Aalim emerges. Thaiyal hoped there would be one last chance for Aalim to get to see Sushmita, and she should know there was a man who loved her unconditionally despite her nationality and religion. But Thaiyal’s attempt fails because Aalim is instantly killed by a bullet to his face. Thaiyal breaks down after seeing the dead body of a 17-year-old boy who only wants to save his people. She comes from a background where she cannot even imagine the hardships Aalim has been through to keep himself alive, and since they both conversed for so long, it felt like she knew the boy inside out and she empathized and sympathized with his cause. Thaiyal is heartbroken again because Sushmita will never know that despite the life Aalim has led, he truly loved her. It is unfair to her, for she was not showered with the kind of love and words he shared with Thaiyal, whom he thought was Sushmita. It is also unfair to Aalim, for he could not speak to Sushmita, not even once, to convey his deep-rooted love for her. Aalim is now gone forever, and we can only hope someone else will take up his place and continue the rebellion.
Final Thoughts
“Raangi” is a film that seems good in bits and parts, but for the rest of the time, it is simply preposterous, but that is the meaning of the word “outlandish” in the context of masala films garbed under the action thriller genre. The action sequences are commendable, but the film waits till the climax to show them off. However, the film did rely on authenticity, especially the Libyan storyline involving Aalim. And for once, we can thank the director of the film for using English dialogue for American characters and Arabic dialogue for Arabic characters. This is a film about storylines that involve multiple nations and nationalities. The screenplay and story were original, but it was completely haphazard, with just scenes that kept jumping from one to another. The pacing of the film is too fast for the audience to understand what is happening in it. 2 hours is a good run time for a film with a story that only requires a person to reach point b from point a. Thankfully, there is no additional melodrama or item numbers that derail the narrative. There were problematic topics that were not dealt with in a proper manner. The emphasis on beauty, even after one has become financially independent, is not the pep talk a young girl like Neha required; the pervert men who contacted Sushmita should have been behind bars for harassing a minor, and they should not have been given a “lecture” by Thaiyal. This is again the matter of men writing women’s characters, where they convey ideas to the audience through the female characters in the film which in reality, no woman would ever say. The emphasis is on saving a girl/woman from something bad that might befall her, women being the good ones for not being active on Facebook; underlying themes such as this make for a problematic narrative. “Raangi” is watchable for the fact that the movie remains faithful to the screenplay and story, without any unnecessary meandering or adding of unconcluded subplots . A decent watch.
“Raangi” is a Tamil language film that is streaming on Netflix with subtitles.
