Shakthi Thirumakan (2025) is a Tamil political thriller released on September 19, 2025. It is written and directed by Arun Prabhu . The film is produced by Fatima Vijay Antony and Meera Vijay Antony under the banner Vijay Antony Film Corporation. The film stars Vijay Antony, Kannan and Krish Hassan in lead roles. The cinematographer is Shelley R Calist and the editor is Raymond Derrick and Crasta Dinsa.
The film has been made at approximately ₹4 to 5 crore and has had gross earnings of ₹2.27 crore by the end of the third day. Although the openings are not very impressive, the film does possess good promise for recovery. It is one of the few Tamil films which is of a running time of 2 hours and 37 minutes which means an unusual and layered cinematographic experience is in store for the viewer.
Contents
Review
The theme of the common man versus the system has been dealt with numerous times in various Indian films. But Shakthi Thirumakan gives this a fresh and rejuvenating approach. The central character here is not a lawyer or a social worker or a police officer. He is a political jagirdar, who lives, acts and delivers results in the nether world of power. Kittu (Vijay Antony) does not make fiery speeches in the Assembly. Rather he wins the system by connections, favours and secret transactions.
The film begins with a startling crime in 1989 hidden away under a coating of political power. The lone survivor of the incident is brought up by Subbaiah who is himself a fixer in the same corrupt institution. Kittu is brought up in the world of power and secrets until his lurking ambition can be stated. The film takes pains to show how real life politics has no relation to philosophies, but has to do entirely with black box negotiations in private rooms.
The first half moves along fast, with smart cutting, fine picturisation and Vijay Antony’s effective but charming performance. Kittu is well characterised, he is that of a man who knows how to create corridors of power without being noticeable. The production design is quite correct in reproducing the bureaucratic political background, while Vijay Antony’s own score builds up a sense of tension in a gentle way.
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The second half lacks stamina. Like too many other Indian political thrillers, is possesses the tendency to give lengthy frantic moral lectures and to give many dictations of detailed explanation. The leap from intrigue to idealism is the making of a too predictable story, for a sharp thrilling story becomes a moral lecture. A script more restricted in space and spread might have taken the intense thrill and real suspense produced earlier.
The supporting cast give a fair show, though few leave any lasting memory. Sunil Kripalani is an excellent villain but glues himself to a strenuous achievement, though the film in this instance alludes to many actual situations which are not always accomplished. The sentimental flash backs etc. give depth of meaning to the story but add to retardation.
Verdict: Shakthi Thirumakan is a thoughtful and up-to-data political thriller and where it excels is in its thought, pictorial expression and theme and its restrained performance by Vijay Antony. Though the film is lengthy and vegetative in the second half, and raises more problems than it solves, it is deserving of much praise for turning the light on the invisible loopholes existed in democracy. It is an amusingly intelligent experience plus realism and connected with reality. As a whole it is a good political chronicle centred round influence and power with some actuality added.
Cast
It is the casting for this film that helps provide the rich political drama that is the core of Shakthi Thirumagan as it lends some realism and dimension to the characters involved. Vijay Antony’s role as Kittu is a powerful one and surely one of the strongest of his career. In this character of Kittu, he has created a politician who tries to influence and manipulate people quietly and through his intelligence. The restraint in his body language and attitude give a sharp contrast to the chaotic aspects of the political world which he faces.
Instead of employing aggression Kittu employs his intelligence and his calculation to win, and it is this very subtlety which gives Kittu a mysteriousness and a believability. Interestingly enough, it is Antony’s own restraint that gives to the power of the narrative. His effect of stoicism and feelings may not give to us a very great deal of emotional range during the intense parts of the film, but they do intensify the feeling of the man who manages to exist and to make a living in a secretive and silent way.
Though there is no way in which such a one as Kittu could ever absolutely enter into the system of the world through just being intelligent, Antony yet lets us know convincingly that such an outsider could possibly find ways and means of manipulating the system.
Antony played a dual role in the film, as composer of the score as well as actor, where the music gave a rhythmic and consistent quality to the film and enhanced the nature of the character being portrayed.
Sunil Kripalani plays the role of Abhyankar, the main antagonist in the film. Kripalani makes his character very menacing, but does not overact in his portrayal. There is that realism about his character that makes you feel he could be an actual possible character whom you would likely come into contact with in the real world of politics. He enhances the part of Kittu, played by Vijay Antony. The changes in power between the two men in personal meetings provides a nice contrast with Vijay Antony’s interpretation, particularly with the intensity of the change of power.
Tripthi Ravindra is the actress who plays Kittu’s wife, Vembu, and brings a feeling of dignity to her role. Vembu is portrayed as a woman who, her relationship with Kittu was likely formed as much by mutual political considerations as by love or personal choice. Vembu has very little room for independent on the part of the script writer, but nevertheless, Ravindra adds a feeling of warmth and an element of intelligence to the character of Vembu thereby providing a degree of emotional clarity to an otherwise almost totally testosterone driven story line.
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Vagai Chandrasekhar, the veteran actor portrays Subbaiah the man who raised the orphaned child following the crime of 1989, shows his ability to provide a feeling of emotion to the film’s flash back scenes. In this way he manages to reinforce the film’s heavy and complex themes of political involvement with the human experience which reminds you of the price that people pay for their individual military or political involvement in this grand stage of political involvement.
Cell Murugan, Kannan, and Krish Hassan help bring alive the world of Shakthi Thirumagan with their small yet meaningful contributions to the film’s story line. They provide a fine all rounded picture of the differing types of people in the political world who function as fixers, loyalists or opportunists thereby making the world of the film a believable and realistic one.
On the whole though, the players chosen for Shakthi Thirumagan, have done a good job of establishing the tone for this film. Vijay Antony and Sunil Kripalani in particular help elevate this film by creating a credible world of political involvement wherein their characters represent the two opposing sides of power – one being the silent and calculating master mind of political tactics, the other the blunt, crudy, but nevertheless forceful enforcer of power.
Critical Reception
Abhinav Subramanian of The Times of India gave the film three of the five stars and praised the screenplay of Shakthi Thirumagan, which was a new approach where Vijay Antony was not the main protagonist, but a middle man in politics. What, they said, makes the movie elevated is that it is quick and stinging and involves when it shows power transactions in silence. They also said that the film was excessive, jump cut and shallow. But it is music by Antony and his performance that rescued the film.
Abhinav Subramanian of The Times of India graciously gives the film three out of five stars and in his review praises the screen play of Shakthi Thirumagan for it is a different kind of film than they have been writing in which Vijay Antony is not the central figure, but one who goes in between, and who through his vivacity and by his puncturing manner of conversation with regard to his power makes the film worth seeing. They went on to say that there is too much with it a going on, cut away and dismal. But to Eddie it were the songs of Antony and his acting, that made the film a success.
The Cinema Express round the film out of 2.5 out of five stars, and liked them well and especially the cut away and the various part of Vijay Antony as a political jackals were good made. They said that the film was always keeping the audience in suspense of power management, good cutting also bad, motives. But they went on to say that the second part was lame in its interminable tirades about power and corruption and lost its rush. The film is not built to the mark and there is something in the production that is good.
Anusha Sundar of OTTplay gives the film two and one half out of five stars and pleads for the film in its early part, for it is a sleek, lively thing and when part acted with degree of intelligence, not to speak of that part of Vijay Antony, who is played as Kittu a powerful brisure in politics. The film they say is filled with biting and rubish writing and cutting, which makes the story about corruption and redtapism. They however gave that the second part faded into qualitative sentimentalism, got away with a breach in logic and Robin Hoodism, and a political drama had melted into a pure given wrong.
Arjun Menon in the Indian Express gives the film 2 out of five stars, and speaks of it as a drama of a political nature with great brilliance on the part of Arun Prabhu, the story of Vijay anthoy who is manipulator and who is invigled into swindles and powerlastic games, etc. The first part of the is elaborate, brilliant, intelligent, exciting and of a great deal of political flavour.
But the second part of the film lapses generally into a time worn, and nigh account moronic hero and villain story, and is therefore not very stupendous, however the acting of Antony and the music and the acting of his research work give the film a hit and well worth seeing.
Audience Reactions
The public’s verdict on this Shakthi Thirumagan film is favorable although not very large, but they who have seen it give favorable reports. The voters of the film on IMDb, not so very many, but good, give it a rating of 7.5 on a 10 scale. Not so many voted for this film, 94 voting for a 4.4 star out of a possible five rating on Google, but those that did give it good opinions. I turned to the user reviews to try and get the opinion of those that wrote the review in question and found:
Shakthi Thirumagan was the most effective political drama in 2025 in many eyes of the reviewers who praise direction by Arun Prabhu and a good score by Vijay Antony with excellent acting by him as well and in a good dual role in fact. Some spoke of the screenplay as being jet speed and that it had a tight grip of the action, with strong smart dialogue and a conclusive poke at politics, which all contributed to the value of the film, in fact.
The amount of study, the intelligent explanation and the good story of the first half, in fact, were very much praised. There are other people who do not by any means compare them with Mr. Shankar’s kind of fashions, and Hari, who calls it a combination of brains on to no limit from the genius with a little tinge of rapidity in to it, and it had also a very salubrious wealth of surroundings to it, as to the venality in these days existing in political matters and questionings of Society. The netters mostly called it a text book, as they said to see it in the theatres it is a must.
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The preparation also as to the extent which had to be done with the brainspark of the politics which were noticed was much commended by these people, who were looking for it, as it was mainly the real things which were only suggested. It is of a more pompous importance to be gone into also, as it was a brain work in the film, it seemed to them that the cinematograph would be much more efficacious for them to see it and worth their while for the admirers of this, in the extent to which it was felt in the line.
The character of Vijay Antony on the impersonation of the hero, and the conclusions about the villain, and the individuals even in the background were in for the depth of such as grandfather. The background of the music, and smoothness of cutting were in themselves commended as to the impersonation in the speedy nature.
There were however the common men who did not like it so much. It was on the whole considered a worn-out claptrap as the second part turned upon, and that the long speeches and didacticisms were not so well done as those which were between them. The thin draw of it was made thus with the other possibilities, explaining would most easily shed the mentally horrible things of the lethargy.
One adverse criticism struck at the cinematograph portion on the perspective of the stereotyped scenes of the Hindoo backgroung, and propaganda pull brought in strongly, but it was in the way of exception. The majority called it a pat on the back, and said that for the jingling and high speed type, and thrilling political portion, if they will, much work of research had been gone into, and cleverness in the speeches and actions of Vijay Antony yet in the eyes of others it was one a slow in the pace or offensively an ideologist. It is by all means a Nikola picture in the Tamil cinematographs of the day.
Soundtrack Review
The music is one of the very best things about ‘Shakthi Thirumagan,’ for Vijay Antony is not only the music and one of the leads, Kittu, of the picture but also the music composer of the piece. This duality of function gives him the proper pitch of the music precisely where it belongs in a quick-moving picture with a political cast, tinged carefully with its emotional tints.
The music is the moving force, the moving power, equivalent that is, to the nauseators of national trickery involved in the plot. The music occurs, in fact, in places as it were, incidentally, a silent partner of the whole, thus doing its share of the actual one behind the scenes among national treacheries and giving a sense of egression to the moments of the scenes when the change of power is done, for example, by telephone or petty cash barter, the music of the song portions here serving as in place of the usual mass-comployment output, but will probably be an instrumental part of the story and in no way distracting.
One of the high lights will be the fact that Antony makes a most successful overture to the thought themes of past labour. His catchy things in ‘Salim,’ where it has been played at, with the words that all things bad are good, all things good, not bad, is a number not easily forgotten. The superstructure of this has been reflected in ‘Shakthi Thirumagan,’ which serve to stress to Kittu upon his grey moralism musically. The music in the film does not glorify power. It questions the inconsistencies of it.
The music of the score is cleverly done. It is very quiet when Kittu is playing the game in silence, at the same time it is well nigh deafening when they are having the political storm. This moderating influence makes the score not monotonous at all. The audience is thus more part of the whole episode, and they are made a part of the dark world of the fixers and plots and treason.
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And while the music is held at a very even beat throughout, towards the end of this otherwise film of fifth theatre, the visual stentorianism of which film end to fill has been so much indulged in by Scorsese, its effect is lessened. All the wearisome, coruscative arguments regarding corruption and democracy come in way of music to give it its gift of emotional force. There is though great hope of the cut that succeeded perfunctorily the beats of Antony in the earlier parts of the film, which are not plentiful but do occur the best arranged in the film.
The music of the Shakthi Thirumagan is not mere background music, but it gets the senses going. It does give expression to the duplicity of Kittu as manager and unwilling rebel, and this is what makes the political thriller stimulating. For them what had previously been on the trail of being the creations of Vijay Antony before the time, it is with much sugar thrown on it given to say that the strain of this writer is not finished off in this score since well upwards are to be heard. Sounds of meaning and rhythm, it seems.
How to Watch
Oh fellows, what do you think of the movie review, do not forget, howlingly, to come again. To see Shakthi Thirumagan film immediately, it is only necessary to go to the nearest theatre on the ground that it is against the law to see it in any unlawful place. In the event of shows not being given and none of the films shown in either of the local theatres, you may, of course, conveniently change theatres. If these give no show, or play film at the next visit by means of some other stretches it, as Loss. Thanks and Good Bye.