There’s a scene in Jigarthanda DoubleX that doesn’t just whisper Karthik Subbaraj’s philosophy; it flaunts it. Caesar, the gangster-turned-gun-slinging film junkie, watches a Clint Eastwood western in a crumbling theatre, transfixed. Then, as if summoned by Eastwood himself, he walks not beside the screen but through it, literally exiting via a door carved into the white canvas, re-emerging with Eastwood’s swagger, silhouette, and slow-burn stare. That’s not just homage. That’s possession. Because for Subbaraj, cinema isn’t a mirror; it’s a portal. And with Retro, he doesn’t just step through it. He charges in, camera-first, swinging a myth, and a 90s dance remix.

Retro is what happens when a filmmaker ties himself up in a dozen knots and dares himself to escape. It’s part Krishna retelling, part surreal vision, and entirely a Subbaraj special: genre-on-genre, idea-on-idea, chaos curated into spectacle. It spans timelines, leaps geographies, and, at nearly three hours, swings between epic drive and indulgent detours. But oh, what glorious detours they are.

We meet Paarivel Kannan, played by Suriya with granite stillness and haunted eyes. Born in a slave colony where every male child is executed, he is intentionally removed from his parents, adopted by a foster mother who adores him and a foster father who sees him as a blunt-force weapon. The man can fight, but he cannot laugh. Anger is not an emotion for Paarivel, its his breath.

And here lies the first of Subbaraj’s many narrative handcuffs: how do you teach a man like that to smile?

The answers, because there are many, begin with Rukmini, a girl he meets at his mother’s cremation in Kaasi, re-encounters in the 90s, and falls for like a man starved of softness. She wants love. He wants peace. But violence has its claws in him. On their wedding day, betrayal erupts. Blood is spilled. His father’s hand is severed. And Paarivel is jailed. You think that would be intermission. Except no. This is a Karthik Subbaraj film.

We arrive in Andaman, a cinematic no-man’s-land of gladiator games, cultish slave-masters, forbidden goldfish shipments (yes, kind-of), and a villain with a gladiator ring. Subbaraj piles on the pulp with gleeful abandon. He’s not afraid to get silly, surreal, or symbol-heavy. He’s having fun.

This is Suriya’s Aayirathil Oruvan. His brother Karthi had Selvaraghavan’s jungle madness, a lost civilization, an ancient Tamil kingdom buried under time and trauma, and a reluctant hero who realizes he’s the chosen one in the midst of crumbling temples and whispered prophecy. Here too, there’s a distant island, a culturally frozen slave society, a secret lineage, a revolution waiting to ignite. But this time it’s Suriya’s turn. His Paarivel does discover who he is. But we already know.

Subbaraj dances with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and then deliberately breaks rhythm. Krishna’s life is textbook ‘monomyth’: born under threat, raised in exile, guided by divine playfulness, he returns to liberate. That arc is everywhere, from Star Wars to The Matrix to Harry Potter. And yet here, Subbaraj seems to resist it. Paarivel is the chosen one, but the film refuses to plunge him into real doubt, real failure. Maybe that’s intentional. Maybe Subbaraj wants to deny us the comfortable myth. But what that resistance also does, unintentionally or not, is lower the stakes. We never feel Paarivel might lose. We admire his strength, but we don’t fear for him. There is no Abyss. Only ascension.

And yet, there are moments of sheer, operatic madness that remind you of Subbaraj’s powers. A 15-minute one-take sequence in the first half, blending dance, drama, and destruction with Suriya, Joju George, and Pooja Hegde moving in perfect chaos, is a technical flex few filmmakers in India would even attempt. It’s messy, muscular, magical. And then there’s the Ha Ha Hospital, no less, where Parivel pretends to be a laughter doctor of joy just to win back Rukmini.

Subbaraj litters the film with absurd, loving callbacks. Senorita I Love You from Johnny drops as Suriya sports the same thick moustache Rajini wore in that film. Later, Daddy Daddy from Darling Darling Darling hijacks the movie in the most WTF moment of the film.

Joju George, as the iron-fisted (literally) villain-father, is spectacular. After Paarivel chops off his hand mid-wedding massacre, he shows up on the Andaman island with a Thanos-meets-Iron-Man gauntlet so hilariously over designed it might as well be its own irumbukai maayavi character. In a role that Vijay Sethupathi would’ve killed, Joju brings menace, conviction, and absolute commitment to pulp.

Shreyaas Krishna’s cinematography is confidently unobtrusive. No Wes Anderson-style lateral dollies here. Instead, whip zooms, punch-in closeups, panning sweeps that serve emotion. Santhosh Narayanan’s score is full-bodied and percussive, except for that one item number (featuring Shreya) that lands like unrequested filler. Jayaram, playing a Chaplinesque therapist who never lands a joke, leaves that entire subplot floating in narrative limbo. But it’s okay. By this point, Retro has left orbit anyway.

You admire more than you ache. The emotional moments, Paarivel meeting his biological mother, a woman long enslaved, her gaze locked into distance, don’t pierce. They unfold like they were meant to matter, but they don’t. Not really.

And yet, the ideas never stop. Identity, anger, liberation, inheritance, spectacle: Subbaraj plays with them all like a kid in a sandbox made of VHS tapes. His screenplay structure is less narrative arc and more magic trick: setup, misdirection, payoff. The dots always connect, even if they occasionally feel somewhat messy.

Suriya is stoic and brooding. He’s a man with a storm behind his eyes, and he sells every beat. But the prophecy angle, the chosen-one reveal, lacks bite. Perhaps because it’s telegraphed too early. Perhaps because Subbaraj is too busy myth-building to ground it in real dread. We never feel like Paarivel might fail. And that, in a story built on redemption, is a small but crucial crack.

Retro isn’t perfect. But it looks beautifully inspired. It’s not original in the sense that nothing here is new: Gladiator, Mad Max, Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds, Spartacus, it’s all here. But mashed up, spun around, and served hot off the Karthik Subbaraj stove, it becomes its own beast. A remix so loud and specific, you can’t help but call it new.

Is Retro messy? Yes. Bloated? A little. Mad? Delightfully so. But is it boring? Never. It’s a three-hour, genre-smashing, politically loaded, spiritually confused, emotionally aloof love letter to cinema itself.

I didn’t love it. But I kind of love that it exists. And knowing Subbaraj, he’s already writing his way into a new puzzle. I can’t wait to see how he’ll escape next.