Writer and director: S Jayakumar
Cast: Ashok Selvan, Shanthanu Bhagyaraj, Keerthi Pandian, Prithvirajan, Bagavathi Perumal
Available in: Theatres
Duration: 166 minutes
It’s only the first month of 2024 and Tamil cinema has already made films with strong political statements and dared to go to spaces not often explored. If Captain Miller talks about how an oppressed community in the pre-independence era had to fight two battles for freedom, Blue Star, set in the late 90s, shares the same emotion. It digs deeper into the societal structures to lend us a newer and more complex perspective.
There is no dearth of cricket movies in Kollywood — if Kanaa (2018) and Jeeva (2014) were vocal about the politics in sports, biopics like 800 displayed the realities of it. Even otherwise, many sports dramas including Sarpatta Parambarai (2021), Bigil (2019), Badri (2001), Ethir Neechal (2013) and others have not shied away from showing the different forms of discrimination. So what does Blue Star offer differently?
The film introduces us to two youngster groups in Arakkonam, a suburb of Chennai. One of them is called the colony people (colony pasanga), while the other is called the village area people (oor theru pasanaga) and the latter belongs to the upper strata. Ranjith (Ashok Selvan) leads the colony cricket team, Blue Star, while Rajesh (Shanthnu Bhagyaraj) is the captain of the village area team, Alpha Boys. This inherent division leads to discrimination. But when a person from the village group goes outside the village, he is suddenly no longer on top of the hierarchy and is at the receiving end of humiliation. The unpleasant side of his privilege and a question of identity slowly creep in. This strong perspective lays the foundation for the solid storytelling in Blue Star. The teams then try to come together to prove themselves and take on the league players in a bigger tournament.