Dragon review: Pradeep Ranganathan and Ashwath Marimuthu deliver a fun-filled, youthful entertainer

One might think the name of the movie is very offbeat for a Tamil film but given that it is about a young guy from college, Dragon is perfect as the title. D Raghavan aka Dragon is a regular middle class college kid who hooked his share of fun and romance while not studying obviously.

In AGS Engineering, he meets Keerthy (Anupama Prameswaran) and love blossoms between the two. She tells him she’ll ‘kill’ him if he ever dumps her but four later, it is Keerthy who dumps him. Why? Because she feels Raghavan is a ‘failure’ - he has 48 arrear papers to clear and is headed nowhere in life. She chooses to marry a man who earns ₹120,000 a month, owns two houses and so on. A hurt, betrayed and angry Raghavan vows to get a job with a ₹120,001 monthly salary in case of one upmanship to prove he is a success as well. But how does he clear 48 arrears? And this is where the real story begins. He cheats and gets a fake degree certificate and climbs up the ladder of success in his company with his boss (Gautham Vasudev Menon) finally sending to him to USA on a promotion. A newly engaged Raghavan (to Kayadu Lohar who plays Pallavi), is on top of the world when everything comes crashing down. How? His college principal (Mysskin) walks into his office out of the blue. What happens next?

Director Ashwath Marimuthu has given us a film that is highly engaging and entertaining with drama, romance and life lessons. Raghavan’s middle class parents struggle to educate him but want to see his success that they are willing to sacrifice everything for him. Raghavan, like many college boys, is carefree and blames his parents for lack of money and not being able to succeed rather than the fact that he didn’t bother to study and earn his degree. Is cheating the only way out for him? Is cheating important in the ladder to success? Does love failure mean you don’t get second chances? Should the parents’ sacrifice be repaid in life? How much should we value honesty?

Like in Oh My Kadavule, Ashwath Marimuthu’s storyline makes it very simple for Raghavan to find solutions to his problems and become successful. And Pradeep Ranganathan’s characterisation also has shades of Dhanush from some of his earlier films and a bit of Pradeep from Love Today. But the way he narrates Raghavan’s story peppered with wonderful friends (the You Tube gang), supportive parents, the romantic songs, the college scenes and so on, make it highly appealing to the youth who can resonate with these themes. Numerous dialogues are philosophical and drive home the bigger picture in life as well. Ashwath has nailed all these aspects beautifully in Dragon but the highlight of the film is the face off between Pradeep and Mysskin. The director has given a good character arc to both and interactions between the two are on point with no unnecessary dialogues. One can’t fault any of the performances as Pradeep’s Dragon drives the film and Mysskin comes in to make it more explosive.

Music and songs by Leon James elevate the changing emotions and moods in the film. The young music director has done a good job in Dragon.

Dragon is a film that is fun and entertaining with an underlying social message that is important at this point in time. Money is important but is money everything in life? Director Ashwath Marimuthu and Pradeep Ranganathan have aced this outing.