Madharaasi review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 09.06.25
★★★ 3 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Madharaasi delivers enough strong action to remain fun while building its hero from a remarkably lazy understanding of psychological trauma. His dangerous compulsion is written as a direct reaction to past suffering, then the woman who supposedly loves him deliberately reopens that wound so he will keep risking his life as an unpowered neighborhood superhero. The movie treats ceaseless retraumatization as motivational support rather than a path toward getting him killed. 😄 Clear motivation is not the same as credible psychology. Enjoy the fights; do not ask the romance to survive contact with its own logic.
Full review — contains spoilers
Is it just me or does it seem like there are a lot of films this year with premises based on a half assed understanding of psychological trauma? This is a fun watch and there's a lot of good action, so don't take this criticism too harshly, but the plot is so weak and lazy. You have a protagonist whose motivations are clear cut because they're written into the script as a reaction to his history of personal trauma. And then you have his love interest who intentionally re-traumatizes him to encourage him risk his life as a neighborhood superhero with no supernatural powers. Basically he's going to get himself killed risking his life to save people because of his history of trauma and the woman who "loves him" thinks that it's a good idea for him to ceaselessly relive that trauma for the rest of his life until he dies. How was this OK with the writers?😄