The Anti-Heroes Of Tamil Cinema

Google defines an anti-hero as, “A central character in a story, drama or film who lacks conventional heroic attributes.” ------------------------In Tamil Cinema, we’ve had the privilege of watching big superstars donning the role of an anti-hero. Surprisingly, fans have flocked into the theatres for such films and made them blockbusters. Just like how Arnold Schwarzenegger beautifully portrayed a genocidal machine in the Terminator series, many stars down south have done the same and reaped well-deserved rewards.
Before we get into the listicle, we’ll talk about the distinguishing characteristics of a villain and an anti-hero.Villains are characters whose evil actions are important to the plot. Anti-heroes can have attributes that aren’t necessarily evil. A good example can be Robinhood who used to steal from the rich and give it to the poor. Even though he was stealing, which is a crime, we somehow empathised with him after he donated the bounty to the poor.
We can conclude that, “All villains are anti-heroes but not all anti-heroes are villains per se.”Without further ado, let’s get into the listicle.

1) Kamal Hassan in DasavatharamFrom his ten diverse roles in the movie, the role of Fletcher a.k.a Foreign Kamal, managed to leave a huge impact to the audience. This can’t be attributed to the screen time the character had but the cold-blooded persona of a gangster he bought onto the screen.For most people , recalling Fletcher out of the ten characters is easy not just because of the look and accent of the character but also because we saw a foreigner giving a tough fight to a fellow indian in the latter’s country. Thankfully, there were no dialogues by Kamal like, “Enga area ku vandhutu, Enakkae va?”
2) Rajnikanth in Endhiran

It takes a lot of conviction and belief in the director to perform the role of an anti-hero after establishing yourself as a superstar at the pan indian level. The role of Chitti (V2.0) had the audience go gaga over the star. Some older fans were transported to the, “16 Vayathinile”, days where we last saw Rajnikanth as a villain.The character was very well written and Shankar made sure that the character wasn’t spoilt by choice but by mere circumstances.


3) Ajith Kumar in Vaali and Mankatha

You can only show a minimal amount of expressions when you’re a deaf mute. To show barbarous characteristics as a deaf mute is a feat in itself. This was one of the main reasons why this movie gained cult status. The display of psychotic qualities with no dialogues impressed everyone.The portrayal of Vinayak Mahadev in Mankatha was a character most people won’t forget. Those stunt sequences where he yells, “ I am a Mad Man”, were just what the character needed to establish himself as an anti-hero.
4) Arun Vijay in Yennai ArindhaalThe idiosyncrasy in GVM’s films are that every character has adequate depth. This puts the actor at ease as he/she can play the character effortlessly. The second half of the film was from the perspective of the antagonist. This wasn’t seen in a tamil film before. People whole-heartedly cheered for the antagonist during the phone call sequences. They even changed their hairdos to match that of Arun Vijay’s. So, all these factors make Victor more of an anti-hero than a villain.
5) Suriya in 24

Who knew that the ever-charming, soft spoken Suriya could pull off a character like Athreya?That scene in the church where he elevates himself and reveals that he is Athreya left people in jitters. The fact that the character looked better than his brother, Dr. Sethuraman(Father of the protagonist) also helped in winning accolades.

6) Vijay Sethupathi in Vikram Vedha

It was well established that Vikram(Madhavan) is the hero of the film through the posters, teasers, trailers, et al. On the other hand, people were so confused about Vedha(Sethupathi).During some scenes it appeared that he was the hero. Some scenes suggested that he was the villain. I believe, that this commotion signifies the victory of an anti-hero. The movie ends with Vikram and Vedha on the same side of the spectrum. This managed to leave the audience in bemusement.Just like Yennai Arindhal, the anti-hero had a character depth almost equivalent to that of the protagonist. This worked out very well for Pushkar-Gayathri.

7) Bobby Simha in Jigarthanda

The character emoted differently in the first and second half of the film. The first half was all about establishing the character as a gruesome gangster in the suburbs of Madurai. The second half killed the character which was setup in the first half. We see that the gangster has turned into a laughing stock for people in the town because of a movie. In the end, we see Sethu(Bobby Simha) becoming an actor. We seem to forget that he was a gangster.

- Nitin M