Con City Trailer Lands Arjun Das With a Money Machine and a Mess

The premise of Con City is the kind a writer either nails or fumbles, and the trailer suggests Harish Durairaj has the tone in hand. A family drowning in debt stumbles onto a machine that prints money, and the comedy and the panic that follow are the whole film. Arjun Das sits at the centre of it, playing well against the brooding, low-voiced parts that made his name, and the trailer, shown to media in Chennai before going public, leans hard into the laughs while keeping a thriller’s pulse underneath. The film opens in cinemas on June 26.

For Arjun Das, the pull is the register. After the intensity of his Kaithi-era roles, a debt-ridden everyman scrambling around a counterfeiting machine is a different muscle, and one he has wanted to flex. Anna Ben plays opposite him in only her second Tamil film, a deliberate swing away from the Meena she played in Kottukkaali into something lighter and showier. The two anchor a cast that the makers kept describing, with some affection, as a young crew that worked like a college batch.

Around them sit the film’s two safety nets. Yogi Babu takes a part the team is betting heavily on for the comedy, and veteran Vadivukkarasi anchors the family with the kind of weight that, by the cast’s own account, lifts every scene she is in. She shot through ill health and was hospitalised the day after the schedule wrapped, a detail the team returned to more than once. Child actor Akhilan rounds out the household at the heart of the chaos.

This is a debut for Harish Durairaj, who not only wrote and directed but put his own money behind it under his Power House Pictures banner, and brought the whole thing in over a tight 55-day shoot. That conviction was the recurring note of the launch: a first-time filmmaker who had carried this story for years finally getting it to a screen, backed by co-producers who said they signed on off a single narration.

The music is where the film reaches for something less obvious. Sean Roldan scores his thirteenth year in Tamil cinema with seven songs written with lyricist Mohan Rajan, and the two singled out a couple of tracks built in the spirit of old Tamil philosophical songs, the kind that thread a thought through a tune. A second single is already out, with more of the soundtrack still to drop ahead of release.

Behind the camera, Aravind Viswanathan shoots, Arul Moses cuts it as his first theatrical release, Raj Kamal handles art and Nava Rambo Rajkumar the costumes, with action by Santhosh. Power House Pictures produces, joined by Maali & Manvi Movie Makers, Klout Studios and Silver Tree Studios, and the film was shot across Mangaluru, Chennai and Mumbai. Netflix has taken the digital rights, a vote of confidence for a debutant’s first feature.

On the evidence of the trailer, Con City is chasing the sweet spot a lot of Tamil comedies aim for and miss: a premise wild enough to carry a high concept, grounded in a family you actually buy. The money machine is the hook, the family is the bet, and a Netflix deal plus a theatrical date on June 26 means Harish Durairaj’s debut gets both windows to prove the gamble paid off.