Scene movie review: Suriya redefines mass in Jithu Madhavan’s ‘scene’-tillating dark comedy
The Hindu · Bhuvanesh Chandar ·
Scene movie review: Suriya’s playful reinvention and Naslen’s wicked charm power Jithu Madhavan’s thoroughly engaging, delectably satisfying dark comedy
A group of young women waver between picking up their bags from the theatre’s baggage counter and watching the film again before the excitement mellows. This is a ‘scene’ I witnessed on Deepavali day today, after watching an early-morning screening of Suriya’s Scene — a Deepavali release that feels like a film version of watching a 10000-wala firecracker burst with timed perfection.
Directed by Aavesham-maker Jithu Madhavan, Scene is an engaging and entertaining dark comedy with so much going for it that choosing its most satisfying highlight is a difficult exercise. Let’s start with Suriya, for whom this will undoubtedly be a hat-trick of hits in 2026.
With a career spanning almost 30 years, Suriya has ‘scene’ it all (all puns in this review are intentional). In fact, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say he’s one of those rare stars who can shift gears, experiment if he wants, or choose less-risky mass entertainers, and still win over his audience more often than not. His offbeat Retroended with mixed results, but it seems to have hardly stopped the experimentalist in him — with Scene, he finds in Jithu Madhavan a filmmaker who understands ‘mass’ on a refreshingly cerebral level. If Nelson recalibrated Superstar Rajinikanth for modern audiences in Jailer 2, Jithu Madhavan finds a satisfying unison between Suriya’s abilities as a superstar and a performer who vanishes into the story.
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