
Movie review
July 21, 2017 · 147 min · UA · Tamil · Crime · Action · Thriller · Adventure
Vikram Vedha follows Vikram, a police officer in Chennai who leads a team that kills criminals in armed encounters. He hunts Vedha, a feared gangster who walks into the police station and gives himself up. Vedha then tells three stories and asks Vikram to solve the hard moral question in each one. The film mixes gunfights, dark jokes, crime, and tense mind games.
Priya, Vikram’s wife, works as a lawyer and stands up to him when he treats her work as less important than his police job. Chandra, the girlfriend of Vedha’s brother, also pushes back after he hits her, and the scene says that men and women can both show anger. These moments give women some control and question old ideas about how wives and girlfriends should act. The main story still centers on Vikram and Vedha as they argue over crime, justice, guilt, and whether any person is fully good or bad.
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Was our 31% Woke rating accurate?
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Vikram Vedha.
Woke representation / casting
Not present. The film’s cast and modern Chennai setting fit one another. The main identity choices are not presented as a diversity message or a mismatch with the story world.
0%
Woke political dialogue
Priya tells Vikram that his job matters to him and hers matters to her. Priya’s line gives a woman equal standing in a marriage and pushes back against his control of her work. Chandra also hits back after Puli hits her, and the scene says that men and women can both show anger. These lines are brief and appear in relationship scenes rather than driving the crime plot.
25%
Identity-driven story themes
Priya is a working lawyer who refuses to treat her career as less important than Vikram’s police job. The marriage gives her room to argue with him and keep her own judgment. Chandra also pushes back against a boyfriend who hits her. These women have some control, but the main arc follows two men debating crime, justice, guilt, and whether people are fully good or bad. The gender material stays in small side stories.
27%
Western institutional / cultural critique
Not present. The film criticizes corrupt police methods and staged killings within its crime story. It does not frame that conflict as a modern attack on Western culture, Christianity, capitalism, or traditional family life.
0%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. The film turns an old Indian folktale into a modern Chennai crime story. It does not change a known character’s race, gender, sexuality, or heroic role to make an identity point.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Not present. Mainstream reviews and audience posts mostly praised the writing, performances, and moral questions. No sustained anti-woke campaign about the 2017 Tamil film was found, while boycott posts in the search results concerned the separate 2022 Hindi remake.
0%
Creator track record context
Pushkar and Gayathri each have a recorded creator score of 58/100. Their past work often gives attention to women, social rank, local communities, and people under pressure. Their public image is mainly that of genre filmmakers, not partisan activists. Producer S. Sashikanth has a recorded score of 55/100, while Chakravarthy Ramachandra has 34/100, so the track record context is moderate.
56%
Production