The Grand Master Review: Chess, Class War & Tamil Cinema

The premise is deceptively simple. An ordinary boy from a community of sanitation workers - a world society has conveniently decided to overlook - discovers chess. Not just any chess: the kind that mirrors the hierarchies he lives under every single day. The rich sit behind their pieces in air-conditioned rooms; the poor clean up after them.

Our young protagonist has to claw his way from the margins to the grandmaster's table. Director Vettri Cheliyan uses the game as an obvious metaphor for the rich-poor divide, but it's a metaphor that works because chess is genuinely brutal. Survival of the sharpest. The film tracks the boy's rise, the confrontations between classes, and the personal cost of ambition in a system built to keep certain people out. With a runtime of 131 minutes, it takes its time setting up the board before making its moves.

Let's talk about what The Grand Master gets right, because there's a lot.

Cheliyan has a real eye for texture. The film doesn't glamorize poverty for sympathy points - it just lives there, showing you the rhythms of a sanitation worker's world without a heavy hand. That authenticity makes the chess scenes hit harder. Every time our hero sits across from someone wealthier, better connected, and smugly certain of victory, you feel the stakes in your gut, not just your head.

The performances are the film's real queens. Abarnathi brings a lived-in warmth that grounds the emotional beats, and newcomer Master Ashwin is genuinely impressive - he plays the boy with a mix of wide-eyed wonder and stubborn steel that never tips into precocious child-actor territory. Lingesh and Suresh Chandra Menon round out the cast with solid work, especially Menon as a figure whose motivations keep you guessing.

Where the film wobbles is pacing. At 131 minutes, it occasionally mistakes slow for profound. Some middle-act stretches drag, and a few subplots feel like drafts that never got fully developed. The class commentary, while powerful, sometimes gets spelled out a little too plainly - we get it, the board is society, you don't need to say it three times.

But when The Grand Master lands its punches, it lands them hard. The climactic confrontation isn't just a chess match; it's a reckoning, and the film earns that moment. There's a quiet dignity running through the whole thing that kept me invested even when the plot meandered.

Pros:

• Powerful, grounded performances - Master Ashwin is a genuine discovery
• Chess sequences are tense and well-staged
• Authentic portrayal of class divides without melodrama
• Strong emotional payoff in the final act

Cons:

• Runtime feels padded; middle sags
• Class metaphor is sometimes over-explained
• A few underdeveloped side characters
• Some pacing issues that blunt momentum

The Grand Master is not a flawless film, but it's an earnest, affecting one. It asks a question worth asking: how does someone with nothing get a seat at a table that was never set for them? The answer it gives - through sweat, sacrifice, and a refusal to be anyone's pawn - is worth watching unfold. Kollywood has been delivering some genuinely interesting dramas lately, and this one earns its place in that conversation. It won't be everyone's checkmate, but for fans of character-driven stories with something to say, it's a strong move.