Dhanush loved playing the notorious gangster Suruli in Jagame Thandhiram, thanks Karthik Subbaraj

Status report: I’ve spent 2.5 hours hoping for a film that starts out disappointing to better itself. After all, this is Dhanush, right? The actor who is a crafty chameleon, and can dissolve into pretty much anything. And this is also Karthik Subbaraj, who is capable of madly stylised story-telling, encased in startlingly psychedelic colours, yes? So why is Jagame Thandhiram, pitched as a gangster tale with sociological underpinnings, so underwhelming? No, dear readers, it doesn’t improve.

Suruli (Dhanush), a loutish fellow with superfast fists, finds himself transported from Madurai to London, there to help Peter (James Cosmo), a ‘racist, supremacist, xenophobe’, clear obstacles in his way and get rid of immigrants washing up at UK shores. Peter gets his jollies from slicing heads and wiping blood off his cashmere woollies, and growling at brown-and-black-skinned people.

A white villain is not enough. So, a fellow Tamilian, the sturdy, dour Sivadoss (Joseph Joju George) is rustled up. And Suruli is all set, scything his way through hordes of gun-toting baddies from both sides, as we get politicians on TV spouting wisdom on anti-immigration laws, and beleaguered refugees streaming in from all parts of the world.