London Indian Film Festival 2012 Review: TOOTING BROADWAY

When I mentioned that I was going to be reviewing a film called Tooting Broadway, I had several eager/befuddled responses from friends. Some were reminiscences from childhood about going down to the tube station of the same name, some were just questions about what kind of film could possibly be made about Tooting Broadway. When I mentioned that the film was a story about Sri Lankan Tamil gangsters in London, I got a good mix of reactions; everything from "aw man, I was hoping it wouldn't be about gangsters", to "cool, let me know what you think!" Well, Tooting Broadway is a unique film, that's for sure, and it touches on the criminal underworld in a way that is rare these days, and has certainly never been done for this particular subculture, and for that alone it deserves commendation.

It is the day before a large contingent of the 130,000 Sri Lankan Tamil ex-pats living in the UK are to stage a huge protest in front of Parliament, when the death of one otherwise disposable girl sends the underworld into a tumult. You see, while many Sri Lankans have fled their homeland to escape government persecution, it seems to have followed them to the UK, and the struggle continues, just on different shores. Even the hoodlums who live by illicit means and try to contain their business matters to the country they now call home get pulled back into the political fray by fundamentalist strains within their ranks, and their war is never truly over.

This is how we find the criminal world when prodigal son, Arun (Nav Sidhu), reappears on the scene after a long absence, determined to find and save his brother Ruthi (Kabelan Verlkumar) from sinking too far into the mire to ever get out. In between these two and their reconnection stands a minefield of corruption, romantic entanglements, mysterious men in suits, and violence that interjects at every turn. Will the Sri Lankan civil war destroy these two brothers who live 7,500 miles away? That's up to them.

This is a world that is very little seen outside of the people who are wrapped up in it, and that's the way they like it. These aren't the first immigrant gangsters in the world with deep ties to radical politics back home, though they may be the least explored. That is one of the things that brings an unexpected depth to director Devanand Shanmugam's film, the idea that this isn't simply a gangster picture like one of Guy Ritchie's super slick joyrides, it is a story about family, not only the biological kind, but family in the greater cultural sense. I suppose that one of the best comparisons I can make is to a film like Shane Meadows' This is England, which is another film about hoodlums with a deeper motivation, however misguided. However, where Tooting Broadway lacks some of the character development of Meadows' masterpiece, it quite capably fills those gaps with great action and wonderfully evocative music.

Like fellow LIFF offering, Runway, Tooting Broadway shows us how easy it can be for aimless youths to become misguided. When young Ruthi loses his father and brother, he looks for a male role model, and finds the wrong kind. I understand the urge to fill that void, and though his story is only partially fleshed out, most of that via expository dialogue, Verlkumar's performance says a lot that the script leaves out. When his brother returns to help out, it may already be too late, how long does it take for resentment to overpower family loyalty? Whose blood bond is thicker? That between Arun and Ruthi, or the common blood that flows through the Tamil community? This is a challenging question, and one that, thank heavens, most of us will never have to answer for ourselves.

In addition to presenting a new set of characters to the film world, from a subculture that has been previously unexplored, Tooting Broadway succeeds in being an exciting, well-paced film with quite a bit going for it. That's not to say that it is perfect, there is some story that could've been explored a bit more artfully, and there is a romantic subplot that is only tangentially related that needed either excision or expansion. However, on the whole this is a new film, a film without precedent. As many Indian and south Asian gangster films as there are in the world, and there are many, very few follow the emigration of their members into other worlds, and certainly not this very precise and tumultuous one.

In a festival full of heavy, introspective, and deliberately paced films, Tooting Broadway stands out for its audaciousness and its commitment to entertain. No, this isn't a comedy, and it isn't an action film whose sole focus is to make the audience "ooh" and "ahh", but it is entertaining. By using the underworld as a backdrop for this story of political and cultural intrigue, Shanmugam has delivered a fast-paced piece of entertainment that may make some people think, but it will certainly leave them satisfied. I'm looking forward to what more he has to say, and I think that Tooting Broadway proves that he's certainly got strong potential.