Sigma has the ingredients for a kickass heist thriller, but Jason Sanjay’s debut gets hopelessly lost in its lazy writing and bland execution, grumbles Sreeju Sudhakaran.
IMAGE: Sundeep Kishan and Faria Abdullah in Sigma.
Key Points
- Jason Sanjay, Thalapathy Vijay’s son, makes a disappointing directorial debut with the heist thriller Sigma, despite initial high expectations.
- The film’s screenplay has lazy writing, introducing conveniences and plot twists without proper groundwork, making the narrative feel contrived.
- Action sequences, such as the parking structure and carnival fights, are marred by awkward editing, forced humour, and a lack of tension, exposing the director’s inexperience.
Whether you love it or hate it, you cannot deny the sheer attention nepotism can bring to a film like Sigma.
Just imagine a movie by a completely unproven director grabbing a spot on IMDb’s most anticipated Indian movies of 2026.
That is Jason Sanjay for you. His name might initially belie it, but you cannot ignore that being Thalapathy Vijay’s son brings a major spotlight to his debut, along with a heavy set of expectations.
By choosing to start his career behind the camera, the newbie smartly avoided direct comparisons to his superstar dad. Yet, he still arrives with considerable fanfare and intense curiosity.
Sadly, his debut venture is a massive disappointment. Jason Sanjay opted for a heist thriller sprinkled with comedy and action. With the right temperament and smart writing, this template could have easily made for a kickass popcorn movie.
But the lacklustre screenplay and pretty average direction ensure no ass is kicked, while the popcorn might be the only delectable enjoyment you have from the movie. That is, if you have bought the high-priced tub.
Hunt For The Most Convenient MacGuffin
So what exactly is Sigma about? The story centres on Guru (Sundeep Kishan), a young man struggling to run a library at a time when no one is interested in reading books.
He stubbornly holds onto the building because, take a wild guess, it holds precious memories of his dead mother. Oh, and it also comes with a mountainload of debt.
The actual heist portion kicks off when Guru randomly discovers a skull-shaped pen drive, stored within are videos proving the illegal activities happening at a local casino owned by Vincent (Shiv Panditt).
This MacGuffin is also conveniently hiding a key that opens a vault containing thousands of crores, which belongs to Veerayya Reddy (Sampath Raj), a powerful and dangerous gangster.
How Not To Make A Heist Movie
Now, a good heist movie should function exactly like a good magic trick. Just as Michael Caine explains in The Prestige, a proper magic trick requires three distinct acts.
Similarly, a good heist film needs to develop its three core acts: The setup, the heist and the aftermath. Sigma, unfortunately, flounders across all three, thanks to lazy writing.
The laziness is witnessed early on when it is left in the air why a ruthless gangster like Reddy would hand the key to his entire fortune over to Ezhil (Kiran Konda), a random, low-level drug dealer.
Even lazier is how Guru stumbles across this life-changing MacGuffin. It has to be one of the drollest, most uninspired coincidences ever written to establish a discovery.
That’s the biggest problem with Sigma; it is not that the movie’s ideas are inherently bad, but that almost none of them are earned. The screenplay keeps introducing characters, relationships, skills and plot twists precisely when it needs them, without doing the groundwork to make any of them feel convincing.
As a result, what should have been a slick, clever heist thriller instead feels like a series of increasingly convenient developments held together by sheer narrative contrivance.
Lazily Developed Characters
Take the sudden love story that blossoms between Vincent’s top henchman, Y (Yog Japee, cast in a classic Yog Japee role), and Sarangi (Magalakshmi Sudarsanan), who used to be Reddy’s moll. He initially kidnapped and brutally tortured her. Then, at some point, she tries to seduce him for her own survival. Then, completely out of nowhere, we suddenly find out they are in an intense, committed relationship.
When exactly did that happen? The screenplay might expect us to read between the lines, but there are no actual lines here, just vague outlines of a terribly developed plot.
The same problem plagues Guru’s heist crew. Not a single one of them serves any actual purpose other than acting dumb or constantly needing to be rescued.
They are such duffers that during the climax, they walk into a smoke-filled room wearing gas masks, a trap they personally triggered, only to pull their masks off just to crack a joke or shout out to an accomplice.
It is not even properly established why even they are in on the hero’s plan. Chalo, I can somewhat understand why Dr Neil (Raju Sundaram), who has essentially been a guardian figure for Guru since childhood, might help him out.
But Sam (Faria Abdullah) feels like she is only there because the movie needed a female lead, and a gangster’s moll simply would not suffice.
You might think that statement sounds sexist, but we are talking about a movie that randomly inserts a pointless Catherine Tresa item song right in the middle of its haphazard second half. It is genuinely sad to see a Gen-Z filmmaker choose to repeat the exact cinematic sins that constantly plagued the outdated ‘potboilers’ made by his predecessors.
The most forced addition to the hero’s gang is Kavithai Ganesh (Anbu Thasan). ‘Forced’ might honestly be an understatement here. This comic sidekick not only serves as the incredibly convoluted reason Guru finds the MacGuffin in the first place, but he also willingly puts his life at fatal risk for a guy he literally just met a few days earlier. A guy who, mind you, almost buried him alive.
If the hero’s team is presented as totally clueless, the villains are honestly no better. Absolutely everything about them is erratic, right down to their violence. They will gruesomely murder a dog just to prove a point, but then completely rely on sheer circumstances to kill their actual human targets.
All-Rounder Protagonist
The convenience of the writing is perhaps most glaringly reflected in Guru himself. Sigma initially wants you to perceive him as a totally normal guy who spends all his time buried in books. But that supposed vast knowledge is never actually utilised anywhere in the film.
In fact, he confidently attributes what sounds suspiciously like a ChatGPT-generated quote (‘The power of a beautiful voice makes all the right kind of noise,’ or something equally cheesy) directly to the third Harry Potter book. I assure you J K Rowling has written no such line.
Then, out of nowhere, Sigma turns Guru into a master hacker capable of overriding automated parking structures. He then morphs into a seasoned action hero who gets into random fights simply because the movie dictates he needs a fight scene.
He even survives brutal hits to the head with iron rods and walks it off like nothing happened, when similar hits made Sanjay lose his memory and Kalpana her life (sorry for the Ghajini callback!). By the climax, he is flawlessly operating an automatic rifle.
Disappointing Action, Direction
The action scenes are also disappointing. You can see the bare bones of promising action set-pieces, like the pre-interval showdown inside a mechanical parking structure or the carnival fight sequence.
But the way they are executed onscreen exposes Jason Sanjay‘s raw inexperience as a filmmaker. They lack the style or panache required to make them visually arresting, and they do not even manage to create the right kind of tension.
That parking structure fight, for example, needed a chilling, claustrophobic demeanour as the hero finally realises he has bitten off way more than he can chew. Instead, the awkward editing and jarring insertion of forced humour completely strip away any gripping tension.
The carnival scene suffers a similar fate. The movie dumps all its main characters into the middle of one set-piece and then has absolutely no clue what to do with most of them. It is incredibly hard to figure out what their actual plans are, only for you to quickly realise there is no plan; the screenplay is just mugging it up as it goes.
A high-tech drone supposed to be tracking one of the hero’s friends suddenly cannot figure out where he went. Meanwhile, the background extras just keep happily dancing even as a fistfight breaks out right in their midst, simply because that was the only cue they were given. Okay, I am done ranting.
The performances are alright (Sampath Raj at least seemed to be having some fun), but the actors can only do so much with such weakly written parts.
Sigma, ultimately, is more of trial by fire for its first-time director than for them. Jason Sanjay needs to realise that audiences expect a certain kind of freshness or unique voice from a young filmmaker like him. Or, at the very least, he needs to make it look incredibly cool (splashing the character names on screen during their intros ain’t that).
Sorry da, but Sigma didn’t make me cry ‘Badass Ma‘!
Sigma Review Rediff Rating:
