Sigma review: Jason Sanjay's debut is a heist film that forgets the heist
A bunch of dim-wits. Crores of money. A villain desperately hunting for a pen drive or a key. Police officers and investigators who invariably arrive at the scene only after everything has already happened. Several heist dramas have adorned the big screen over the years. Will CM Vijay’s son, Jason Sanjay, deliver something new with this heist drama titled Sigma built around new-age ideas? Let’s find out.
Guru (Sundeep Kishan) runs a library in his ancestral home but is neck-deep in debt. Then there’s Veerayya Reddy (Sampath Raj), a Telugu smuggler and poacher who has a vault housing Rs 1,000 crore. There are only two keys to the vault — one is with Veerayya, while the other is with Ezhil (Kiran), a drug pedlar.
Then there’s Vincent (Shiv Panditt), who runs a casino masquerading as a theatre and also uses it as Ezhil’s headquarters for dispensing drugs. There’s a heroine arc, an assassin and a wronged woman waiting for revenge. All of these threads come together in Jason Sanjay’s Sigma, which runs for about two and a half hours.
Director Jason Sanjay’s Sigma arrives at a time when there is immense expectation surrounding not just the film but also the debutant himself. The 25-year-old attempts a heist drama with multiple subplots that conveniently converge at crucial points. But, Sigma is painfully outdated. One would expect some fresh ideas from a young filmmaker making his debut, but the film is stacked with one stale idea after another, none of which does justice to either the heist or drama elements.
The film introduces a slew of characters in the initial stretches, but none of them make much of an impression. The villains do not look menacing, the hero doesn’t get a moment that grabs our attention, and the supporting characters are painful to listen to. The dialogues are as bad as the screenplay, and the film barely makes an effort to hold your interest. One dialogue from a supporting character (Anbu Thasan) goes: “Konjundu dope, konjaradhuku keep” — essentially, “A little dope, a mistress to keep.” If that is the film’s idea of a rhyme scheme, one can imagine what the rest of the dialogues sound like.
Sigma does have some interesting ideas, but they are executed in a frustratingly rushed manner. Take, for example, the fight sequence set in an automated car parking system. If executed well, it could have given the film a much-needed high. Instead, it is Guru’s sidekick (Anbu Thasan) who does most of the fighting, and by the time Guru finally enters the sequence, the audience is already tired. Similarly, another fight sequence is set inside a tempo van, but something as basic as keeping the doors shut during a fight seems to have escaped the writing.
Throughout its runtime, we are repeatedly teased about a vault packed with money. Yet the protagonist and his sidekicks are hardly ever seen seriously plotting a heist. When they finally attempt to plan one, the operation is so silly that even a layperson can spot the loopholes. In short, Sigma is a heist film that overlooks the heist.
That is where Sigma fails most spectacularly. A heist film needs ingenuity, tension and the thrill of watching a seemingly impossible plan come together. What this film needed was a sense of invention and a screenplay capable of gripping the audience. Instead, Jason Sanjay’s drama is weighed down by familiar ideas that do little for the genre or the audience.
The screenplay is messy, the conflicts are even messier, and the dialogues are among the film’s biggest weaknesses. At several points, the writing is so clumsy that it becomes difficult to remain invested in what is happening on screen.
The editing doesn’t help Sigma either. Right from the initial sequences, the film gives you the hangover of watching a television series, with abrupt cuts and transitions that repeatedly disrupt the flow. Several crores have clearly been poured into the making of Sigma, and the production value shows. From the drone shots to a drab fight set in what the film calls a street carnival, complete with huge graffiti-covered walls, there is no shortage of scale on screen.
But none of that matters when the performances of the cast and the story are caught in a messy marriage. Visual scale cannot compensate for a screenplay that lacks precision, and expensive set pieces cannot create excitement when the writing fails to build any real tension.
Sigma ultimately lacks conviction, invention and a clear sense of direction. For Jason Sanjay, it is a disappointing debut — a film that has all the ingredients for a heist, but somehow forgets to make the heist exciting.- EndsALSO READ | CM Vijay's wife Sangeetha watches son Jason Sanjay's Sigma on opening day
A proud South Indian, especially Chennaiite, with love for films, food and cricket. She loves entertainment. In life also. Cries in theatres, watches films alone and always takes back some lessons. Hills over beaches for her. If not for films, you can see her obsessing over food videos and making organic soaps. Also, a Senior Assistant Editor at India Today Digital covering South films.
