Karthik Subbaraj is one of Tamil cinema's blue-eyed boys. His films are original and rooted, and have a panache born of an appetite for global cinema. All his films so far, Pizza, Jigarthanda (Cold-Hearted/a Madurai falooda), Iraivi (Goddess) and Mercury, have had strong stories and narrative treatment, often with a meta narrative about a film-maker, even if he stumbled with Mercury.

His latest film Petta (Neighbourhood) is about Kaali (Rajinikanth), a hostel warden in St Wood's College, who fights baddies on campus. He has a past that has him fighting assorted gangsters, mainly Singhar Singh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a right-wing politician, and his son Jithu (Vijay Sethupathi). The screenplay is crammed with thin subplots, such as a Rajinikanth-Simran romance, a Hindu-Muslim student romance, dramatic gang wars, a paternity issue, and a climactic twist that is not fully convincing.