Venky Atluri’s Vishwanath & Sons runs 161 minutes and carries three genres — drama, romance, comedy — and that runtime is the whole problem. The film has a strong engine: Sanjay Vishwanath, an industrialist and Olympic rifle shooter played by Suriya, wins gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics after a racist mob wrecks his gun minutes before the finals. He repairs it himself, a trait inherited from his father, Vijay.
Then Atluri asks that same man to carry a sick child, a surrogacy scandal, and a romance with a medical student half his age.
Trailer, via PVR.
From the Paris range to San Francisco
The film’s best stretch is its first. Sanjay returns to India to a warm welcome from his mother, Nirmala Devi, played by Radhika Sarathkumar, who immediately presses him on marriage and the end of the Vishwanath bloodline. He answers by flying to San Francisco and coming home with a newborn, Abhay, born through a surrogate. Nirmala is not pleased.
That is a real conflict, and Suriya plays it straight. Then Abhay is diagnosed with a disorder that needs a bone marrow transplant, Sanjay does not match, and the film has to go find the surrogate mother.
Maddy Jay and the $75,000 deal
She is Madhanakameshwari Jyothilingam — Maddy Jay — a carefree orphan and medical student played by Mamitha Baiju. Sanjay is shocked at how young she is. The doctor who arranged the surrogacy tells him women in their early 20s are considered optimal for such arrangements. Maddy agrees to the procedure for $75,000, money she says will clear her medical school debts and get her away from loan sharks.
Baiju is the film’s live wire. Her Maddy is funny, unbothered, and completely at odds with the Vishwanath house, which is the point.
The trouble is what Atluri does with her once she lands in India. Nirmala disapproves of Maddy’s attitude, then learns her parents died in a car accident, then bonds with her. Raveena Tandon appears as Anjali Devi, her return to Tamil cinema after Aalavandhan in 2001, and the supporting bench — Nassar, Sunil, Harsha Chemudu, Bhavani Sre — is deep.
Here is what works, ranked:
- Suriya’s Sanjay, a middle-aged man whose ambition and family duty collide.
- Baiju’s Maddy, the only character who moves the film forward.
- G. V. Prakash Kumar’s music, which does more lifting than the script.
- The Ooty and Belarus locations, which give the second half somewhere to stand.
What does not work is the romance. Atluri wants us to believe Sanjay and Maddy fall for each other, and the film never earns it. The age gap is not the issue; the writing is. Every scene between them is a transaction — a transplant, a payment, a favor — and the film mistakes proximity for chemistry.
Vishwanath & Sons is a 2026 Tamil-language romantic family drama, produced by Sithara Entertainments and Fortune Four Cinemas, announced in May 2025 as Suriya 46 and titled in March 2026. It was shot in Ooty and Belarus, wrapped in June 2026, and released on 14 August 2026. It became the third highest-grossing Tamil film of 2026.
The box office says audiences wanted this. The film they got is two movies fighting: a sharp Olympic drama and a soft surrogate romance, and the second one wins by default.
Suriya is good enough to hold both. The script is not.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
