**SPOILERS AHEAD**
With three films out so far, the idea of the Lokesh Cinematic Universe (LCU) has been firmly established in Kollywood. But whether Lokesh Kanagaraj’s latest film Leo is a worthy addition to the LCU, remains up for debate. Unlike its multistarrer predecessor Vikram (2022), Leo only boasts Vijay and Sanjay Dutt as its truly big male stars. Yet the film flounders with many of the same elements which Vikram breezes through with ease. Leo also has you wondering if the LCU is really going to pan out anything like its behemoth namesake – the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – in terms of complex crossovers and interconnected plots.
Director Lokesh Kanagaraj, after his debut Maanagaram (2017), brought us the first film in the LCU, the heist thriller Kaithi (2019). Starring Karthi, Kaithi proved that its director knew how to weave in plot tension, mass moments and an intelligent mystery with barely a dull moment in the entire run time. His next film, Master (2021) with Vijay in the lead, isn’t a part of the LCU, but gave us a glimpse of how Lokesh would balance star power and his manner of storytelling (unlike many simplistic star vehicles made in Kollywood). Lokesh repeatedly insisted at the time that Master is equal parts his film and a Vijay film. This translated into an engaging first half with Vijay playing a type of flawed character that was rare for him till then, while reverting to the star’s bombastic template in the second half.
When Kamal Haasan starrer Vikram (2022) released, one aspect clearly differentiated it from Master. Kamal hung back for most of the film’s pre-interval block, heightening the enigma of his character nicknamed Ghost. This balanced out the predictability of Kollywood fare featuring mega star actors, wherein audiences knew all along who Kamal’s Vikram (a reference to the actor’s 1986 spy thriller of the same name) really was. Kamal and Lokesh’s decision also allowed for other cast members like Fahadh Faasil and Vijay Sethupathi to create their own space in the story and expand the LCU.
In comparison, Leo is dedicated to Vijay to the point that the writing gives even its main antagonist the flimsiest reason to be a villain.
At the end of Vikram, we were introduced to Suriya as Rolex – an even more powerful drug lord than the terrifying Adaikalam (Harish Uthaman) and his cocaine ring in Kaithi. Suriya’s cameo is reminiscent of the MCU’s famous mid- and end-credit scenes that hint at events in the next instalment. Rolex’s appearance had the desired effect too. We understood that Adaikalam was only a small piece in a monstrous drug trade network spanning the country. The next LCU film, we were promised, was going to take us deeper into the mystery surrounding them.
Then, Leo happened. A film that spends more time on establishing how its hero can sweet talk even a feral hyena and turn it into a cuddly guard dog than on why exactly we should take the villain Anthony Das (Sanjay Dutt) seriously.
In Kaithi, Dilli (Karthi) and Adaikalam have no more than a few seconds together on screen, but these moments manage to reveal a festering enmity between the two. Though it was hinted at again in Vikram, we still don’t know what this is about.
Dilli is starkly unlike most Kollywood heroes, and this lets Lokesh write a protagonist whose humanity slowly emerges until it shines bright. He matters to us beyond the fact that he’s played by a popular star, allowing for a more fluid script.
If this approach wasn’t possible in Vikram, the sheer swagger of its main characters and parallel smaller stories offered both spectacle and intrigue. So we could understand what fuelled a character like Santhanam (Vijay Sethupathi) and his outbursts of extreme violence. He was a cruel man trying to protect himself and his family from someone even more ruthless than himself — Rolex. His fear propelled his violence, making him a volatile element in the plot.
But in Leo, neither does Sanjay Dutt’s Anthony Das have a logical reason for his atrocities, nor does he come off as a man who is violent for perverse pleasure. In a flashback, we see Anthony’s growing obsession with the occult, surrounded by pentagrams and crucifixes. He keeps making animal sacrifices to ensure his success, until he decides to switch to human sacrifices. But these sacrificial humans need to have just the right horoscope. Unsurprisingly, the horoscopes of his own twins Leo (Vijay) and Elisa (Madonna Sebastian) turn out to be the perfect match. No marks for guessing who ends up being sacrificed, and Leo now has a past axe to grind with his father. This sister sentiment is as old as Tamil cinema.
But the tedious plot isn’t Leo’s only problem. The cameos that blend seamlessly into Vikram's main story feel hackneyed in Leo. Yesteryear hero Arjun as Leo’s uncle and drug lord Harold Das comes across as yet another caricature among the film’s antagonists, who fail to convince us of their villainy. With this coterie of badly written gangsters, the theatre and intrigue of Vikram fizzles out in Leo.
It’s not just the villains. Leo doesn’t accommodate even the good guys with satisfying arcs, like Fahadh Faasil’s Amar in Vikram. Even a beloved returning character — police constable Napoleon (George Maryan) who was a hoot in Kaithi – is diminished to ensure Vijay’s Leo is the only man of the hour. Napoleon’s entry in Leo drew resounding cheers from the audience, and while it sparks intrigue about more pieces of the puzzle falling into place, this doesn’t happen.
Instead, Napoleon’s character arc in Leo makes one wonder if the film’s star is absolutely averse to sharing any glory on screen, unlike Kamal in Vikram. Leo reduces Napoleon to a caricature of his Kaithi version, where the audiences root for him to overcome the siege of his police station by Adaikalam’s gang. Instead, in Leo, we see the hero chiding Napoleon for moving away from his guard post outside Leo’s house at a crucial time to get some food. Despite the stark class difference between the two, we hear Leo sermonising to Napoleon about the need to approach work as ‘service’ instead of succumbing to ‘selfish’ interests.
Then there is the portrayal of Anthony's occult activities, which appears borrowed heavily from countless Hollywood horror films with the problematic tendency of demonising pagan spiritual practises in favour of Biblical fervour. In Leo, the imagery feels out of place, and further deflects from the continuing mystery around the big bad drug network.
On the whole, it feels as if with Leo, Lokesh lost track of furthering the LCU in favour of Vijay’s non-committal political statements ahead of his expected political entry. Although Vikram too had Kamal Haasan deliver a long monologue about his virtuous war on drugs for which he expects to be celebrated in the future, it stuck with the established themes, while the rest of the film fit well into the universe that Kaithi introduced. But is Leo’s politics even worth botching the LCU for?
No. What we get is a mix of vague tokenism, and directorial choices that betray a lack of awareness about even mainstream conversations on social injustices.
The reformed Leo doesn’t drink (he does smoke though). He gets lambasted by villainous north Indian police officers who say, “Nee sattamum illa, nee arasangamum illa” (you are neither the law nor the government). He also doubles as an animal rights advocate. There’s a fleeting scene to suggest that the same actor who mouthed slut-shaming lines in Sivakasi (2005) now wants to warn men that they must take consent even from their wives before touching them. This scene shoots itself in the foot by not making room for the woman character to assert her consent and instead has the hero do the talking for her (and recalls a similar sequence from Master where Vijay’s JD forces a sexual assault survivor to confront the perpetrator when she’s not ready, her agency overruled by the star's newfound dedication to gender rights).
Leo doesn’t do any better on other vectors of marginalisation either. When a low-level hitman Shanmugam (Mysskin) is killed, Lokesh shows his funeral being held in a pig sty. The camera bears down on the wailing wife and the animals surrounding the body. So in the same year that Mari Selvaraj showed us pig rearing – largely a caste-based occupation forced upon Dalits – with tenderness and dignity in Maamannan, Leo uses a similar setting to evoke disdain. Like every other villain in the film, Shanmugam is extraordinarily violent. But this scene, even if done inadvertently, conflates his caste location with his brutality, and serves to render him less than human.
This is all to say that unlike Kaithi or Vikram, when it comes to films with Vijay, Lokesh seems to be struggling to tone down the stardom and fan service in favour of the plot, while unsubstantial ‘political’ fights take precedence. His latest outing falls short in both its contribution to his fictional universe and in the weight of its political statements.