BISON MOVIE REVIEW
Cast: Dhruv Vikram, Pasupathy, Rajisha Vijayan, Anupama Parameswaran, Lal, Ameer Sultan
Director: Mari Selvaraj
Rating: 3.7/5
There’s a moment early in Bison where you realize Mari Selvaraj isn’t interested in giving you a traditional underdog story. Sure, the beats are familiar: the talented kid, the skeptical father, the impossible dream. But Mari plants his story in soil soaked with decades of hate, where even standing still is a political act.
Dhruv Vikram plays Kittan with a coiled intensity that sneaks up on you. He’s not flashy, not immediately charismatic. Instead, he lets the rage simmer just beneath the surface, and when it finally boils over in the final stretch, you feel every ounce of frustration he’s been carrying. The kabaddi sequences are surprisingly gripping for a sport that doesn’t naturally lend itself to cinematic spectacle. You actually care about each raid, each point scored.
What makes this Mari’s most accessible film is also what occasionally holds it back. The gangster subplot involving Lal and Ameer Sultan’s warring factions feels necessary for context but becomes repetitive. We get it: caste violence is cyclical and senseless. The romance with Anupama Parameswaran barely registers beyond establishing that Kittan has something to lose. These threads don’t derail the film, but they do make you wish for the surgical precision of Vaazhai.
Where Bison truly succeeds is in showing how exhausting it is to simply exist when the world keeps testing you. Pasupathy, as Kittan’s weary father, delivers this message without speeches. His eyes carry the weight of someone who’s seen too many dreams get crushed. Rajisha Vijayan’s sister believes enough for both of them, pushing her brother toward a future she’ll never have.
The violence here is brutal, often shocking, but it’s never glorified. Mari uses it to illustrate a point: Kittan isn’t fighting opponents on the mat, he’s fighting a system that would rather see him fail. Ezhil Arasu’s cinematography captures both the claustrophobia of village life and the brief moments of freedom Kittan finds on the court.
Is this Mari’s best work? Probably not. But it’s a solid, frequently powerful film that proves he can work within commercial frameworks without losing his voice entirely.