Review: DC

DC marks director Lokesh Kanagaraj's first outing in front of the camera, and Arun Matheswaran doesn't ease him in gently. Set against a 2011 gang-versus-police manhunt in the Chittoor region, the film builds Kanagaraj's Devadas as one node in a larger criminal network rather than a lone anti-hero, and that grounding gives the action real stakes instead of letting it float free of consequence.

Anirudh's score does a lot of the film's heavy lifting, driving momentum through stretches where the plotting itself settles into fairly familiar cop-versus-gang territory. Kanagaraj acquits himself well as a performer, more comfortable in the film's quieter, tenser scenes than in some of its bigger action set-pieces, and the supporting cast, including Wamiqa Gabbi, gets enough room to register without pulling focus from the central manhunt.

Anirudh's score does a lot of the film's heavy lifting, driving momentum through stretches where the plotting itself settles into fairly familiar cop-versus-gang territory.

Three stars for a confident directorial hand and a genuinely watchable lead performance in a story that doesn't take many risks with its own structure. Solid, well-crafted mass entertainment rather than something that reinvents the genre.