Sarpatta Parambarai is a period sports drama written and directed by Pa Ranjith. The film has Arya and Dushara Vijayan in the lead roles while Pasupathi, Kalaiyarasan, John Kokken, Santhosh, Anupama Kumar, Sanchana Natarajan, John Vijay and others play crucial supporting roles. It is produced by Neelam Productions and K9 Studios, has music by Santhosh Narayanan and cinematography by G Murali.

While making a sports drama, there is always a risk of getting stuck into a fixed template of an underdog achieving success. This film too is no different. But what stands out about Sarpatta Parambarai is how Pa Ranjith encompasses geography, history, sport, politics and emotions into the script.

Kabilan (Arya) is a wage labourer in Chennai Port and has deep enthusiasm for boxing. Circumstances lead him to taking up the sport and he's pretty successful in it. But how his caste location, class, historical events and the people around him influence his fall and rise forms the plot.

Arya's build certainly helps him sell his character Kabilan well. The role reminds us how talented he is as an actor. For instance there is a scene where he repents getting addicted to alcohol. The way he performs in that scene makes you stand up and applaud. Among other performers, Pasupathi, Kalaiyarasan, Anupama shine as usual, and Dushara Vijayan is a revelation as Mariamma, Kabilan's wife.

If we look at Ranjith's previous films, and compare it with Sarpatta Parambarai, we can observe a pattern. Ranjith picks a location and fills it with realistic characters who look extremely human, which results in the geography coming to life. This means, the people living in the area aren't homogeneous in nature. You can find all kinds of people and all of them have grey shades instead of being black and white. In Sarpatta too, we find the Blacktown part of North Madras come alive.

Credits should go to art director T Ramalingam here, whose sets almost recreate how the real location looks. From the houses to the streets to the clock tower in the middle of the town, everything is believable. Rather than focussing on the sport alone, Ranjith digresses and shows how a sport can imbibe discipline into a person's life, and at the same time paints a picture of how things not under our control can pull you down.

Ranjith in Sarpatta Parambarai speaks about how the working class man has to sacrifice everything in order to reach the top. It's not shown in a revolutionary way, but through simple instances in Kabilan's life. Despite getting married, he cannot find time to spend with his wife. He is, in a way, cut off from everything he cherished in his life, and that results in his victory becoming a victory for the working class as a whole.

The small tributes to Muhammad Ali, who spoke against racism in the US spice up the film. Right from the start the film is quite engaging and makes us root for the protagonist because the emotional base is set right. The women in the film also have their own agency for which writer-director Ranjith must be appreciated. Ranjith has also used a small portion from an Anand Patwardhan documentary to depict a period portion which again is a good decision.

On the technical side, Santhosh Narayanan underplays with his music for most of the film, but sets the screen on fire during the scenes where Kabilan trains and boxes. The song Neeye Oli infuses extra energy to the viewers and it works well. A thesis can be written on how Murali captures the boxing bouts in this film, which is outstanding. A lot of unconventional shots are used, which we never see in other sports dramas.

On the flip side, the runtime (173 minutes) and the commercial treatment towards the end hit the engagement. Although the film and it's end can be predictable, because of the nature of the genre, all that matters is how well the film entertains and engages you overall. And in those aspects Sarpatta Parambarai manages to tick the right boxes.