Review of movie Kanaa

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Rating:3.5/5

With Kanaa, Arunraja Kamaraj, who makes his debut as a director, hits two birds in one stone. On one hand, he gives us a sports movie about an underdog winning against odds. And on the other, he gives us a message movie that talks about the importance of farming. This might seem like a weird crossover, especially when the underdog angle itself has women empowerment as a message. But, sweet surprise! The director manages to pull this off quite convincingly. In fact, it is this mashup of genres that sets Kanaa apart from other sports dramas.


Right from the opening scene, Arunraja gives equal importance to both these conflicts in his story and often resorts to cross-cutting between the two parallel plots, which beautifully merge at the climax to deliver an effective punch. The film begins with a local cricket match that gets interrupted after the two teams get into a fight. We are then told the story of Kausalya aka Kausi (Aishwarya Rajesh) and her father Murugesan (Sathyaraj), a farmer. The latter is so mad about cricket that he is interested in watching a match than crying over his father's death. But he breaks down over India losing a cricket match, and Kausi, who sees this, resolves within herself to become a cricket player and win matches to make her father happy.