Baththa (2026) · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)

Dir. Balaji Tharaneetharan · Vijay Sethupathi, Master Sai Prithviraj, Lijomol Jose · 158 min · Tamil

In theatres since 1 Oct 2026 · Netflix holds the post-theatrical rights, no confirmed streaming date yet

*

A feared gangster gets locked inside a school toilet by an eight-year-old boy, and the film that grows out of that absurd premise is the warmest thing Tamil cinema has given us this year.

1986, Madras. Baththavachalam — Baththa to the street — runs his patch on pure fear. People lower their eyes, not their voices. He terrorises his wife Kannima, though he melts for his daughter Thenu. Meanwhile Sabari, a timid schoolboy, does something small and stupid: his teacher confiscates his toy the day before summer vacation, so he sneaks into the school at dawn to take it back. He uses the toilet on the way out and locks the door behind him. Then somebody knocks from inside.

It is Baththa. And Sabari, frozen, does the only thing an eight-year-old can do — he runs, and then he comes back with rusks, crushed and pushed under the door.

Everything the film is about sits in that gap: the most feared man in the neighbourhood entirely at the mercy of the least powerful person in it. For days Baththa promises murder through the door. Sabari says nothing at all. Then the threats turn into pleading, and the pleading turns into something neither of them has a word for.

Vijay Sethupathi is the reason this never tips into sentimentality. He gives you the dangerous man first — the flared temper, the beatings, the way a room rearranges itself around him — so the later softness costs something. The film's best idea is saved for late: why Baththa became what he became, a man who loved to sing and was laughed at for it so relentlessly that he built a life where nobody would dare laugh again. It reframes every earlier scene as armour, and Sethupathi carries it without a single showy moment.

Then there is Master Sai Prithviraj, and this is the performance people will remember. He is on screen for long stretches with almost nothing to do but be terrified, and he plays fear as stillness — the crumbled rusks, the silence, the way he backs away from a door as if it were a fire. Child actors are usually directed toward cuteness. This one is directed toward truth, and he is more than equal to it. The relationship is never spelled out in dialogue, which is exactly why it lands.

The middle stretch, where a ganglord conducts a hostage negotiation with a schoolboy he cannot see, is the funniest thing I have watched in a long time — and it stays funny without ever letting you forget that a child is carrying this secret alone. Balaji Tharaneetharan (of Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom) has always been good at people talking past each other; here he finds the tender version of that trick.

The resolution is generous to a fault. Baththa apologises — to Kannima, to his enemies — and the film believes, without embarrassment, that a man can be talked out of his worst self by a boy who fed him biscuits. At 158 minutes the second half does ease off the throttle. I did not mind. That warmth is the point of the film, and it is earned rather than assumed.

By the time Baththa finally sings in front of a hall full of people, badly, with his eyes shut — and the crowd decides that sincerity is worth more than pitch — the film has quietly made its argument about the selves we lose while playing the roles the world hands us, and the goodness still sitting underneath them.

Not a great crime drama. A better film than that: a feel-good one that never lies to you to get there.