'DSP' Review | The cop comedy is yet another film that doesn’t deserve Vijay Sethupathi

Vijay Sethupati in a still from 'DSP'.

Vijay Sethupathi’s filmography reminds one of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. If you run your finger down the list and land on Aandavan Kattalai (2016), Super Deluxe (2019), '96 (2018) or Vikram Vedha (2017), you will declare that this is an actor with a fine taste in picking movies. But if it is Junga (2018), Oru Nalla Naal Paathu Solren (2018) or Annabelle Sethupathi (2021), you will wonder if his script selection could get any worse. Tragically for this reviewer, DSP falls on the unsightly side of the beast.

Directed by Ponram, the Tamil film DSP is a collection of clichés stapled together. The hero is called Vasco Da Gama (Sethupathi) — probably because it rhymes with the line "I will send you to a coma" from its title song — and he’s an aspiring police officer. Vasco Da Gama is on a bus when he decides to tell a fellow passenger his life story. Cue for a voiceover introducing each person in his life. The stock characters of the Tamil cinema family appear. A loving mother, a strict but loving father, an irreverent but loving sister. There is a loud sidekick (Pugazh) and a loosu ponnu (crazy girl) heroine (Anukreethy Vas) to complete the picture.

The villain is "Mutta" Ravi, played by Prabhakar, who shot to fame as the King of Kalakeyas in Baahubali: The Beginning (2015). Ponram isn’t known for subtlety, so the incidents that tell us who is playing which stereotype unfold in exactly the same way as they have unfolded in hundreds of films of this genre. In fact, most of the first half that laboriously establishes these characters and their connections seems like a pointless and repetitive exercise. The film is greatly approving of encounters and custodial torture, and if not for songs from recent releases that are played during such scenes (to highlight the "comedy'), you’d be forgiven for thinking DSP was made a decade ago.

The conflict between Vasco Da Gama and "Mutta" Ravi is contrived, with Ponram piling one motive after the other without adequately building up anything. Formulaic masala films can be great fun to watch if they’re done right, but DSP doesn’t even try. That said, Sethupathi, aka VJS, is reliably amusing — his scenes with the talented Ilavarasu are proof that good actors will perform no matter how bad the script is. Anukreethy makes a forgettable debut as the brash, wannabe sassy leading lady. It’s hard to say which is worse in the film — the cringey romance or the slapstick humour.

Shivani Narayanan and Deepa Shankar appear as women cops — one gets sexualised by her colleagues while the other is present for comedy. This is precisely the kind of inclusion rider that we don’t need. Vimal makes an unnecessary cameo that adds nothing to the film other than its runtime.
Ponram seems to have visualised a cat-and-mouse game between the hero and the villain in the second half, but the twists are laughably inane. "Mutta" Ravi growls to D Imman’s unbearably loud background score, Vasco Da Gama looks momentarily stumped only to outwit him. The rapid editing doesn’t mitigate the randomness of the screenplay.

The final standoff between Ravi and Vasco Da Gama is the mother of all clichés, and the only good thing that can be said about it is that it signals the end. Ponram seems to have abandoned all pretense that he’s directing an original movie because Ravi mouths, “Are you okay, baby?” (VJS’s famous dialogue from Naanum Rowdy Dhaan, 2015) to Vasco while the latter speaks to him in the language of the Kalakeyas from Baahubali. It makes zero sense except that you’re tempted to answer badman Ravi’s question with a resounding “No, I’m not okay, baby.” VJS, are you listening?