The teaser for Bloody Politics is out, and the first thing it wants you to notice is who's playing the villain. It's Selvaraghavan. Not directing, acting, as a political leader who appears to be the film's main antagonist. A few frames later, there's P. Vasu, the man who directed Chandramukhi, turning up as a security guard. It's the kind of casting that makes you do a double take, and going by the teaser, that seems to be the point.

The film is directed by Deena Raghavan and stars Gautham Ram Karthik, the actor formerly known as Gautham Karthik, who recently added his father Karthik's screen name to his own. Anjana Nethran also features. It's a low-budget production, and the teaser wears that on its sleeve while clearly reaching for the mood of Pa Ranjith's Madras, a film about ordinary men and the politics that swallows them.

The teaser opens on a line that sets up the whole premise: there was a time when the one who knew everything became the leader, it says, but now it's the one everyone knows who gets there instead. Bloody Politics, going by that, is building toward the story of a small-time worker who claws his way up to becoming a political leader, and everything that costs him along the way.

For Gautham Ram Karthik, this is another shot at a hit that has been slow to arrive. He debuted under Mani Ratnam in Kadal and has since worked through films like Muthuramalingam without landing a big one. Iruttu Arayil Murattu Kuthu, an adult comedy, gave him his only real commercial success. His last outing, Mr. X, had him playing a double agent villain opposite Arya, and that didn't work either. A political drama is a different kind of swing, and going by industry chatter around him, a deliberate one.

On the strength of the teaser alone, Gautham Ram Karthik's screen presence is being read as solid, in keeping with what his supporters have said about him through the years. Whether Bloody Politics turns into the breakout his fans have been waiting for depends on what Deena Raghavan does with the full film, and on whether audiences buy a villain played by one of Tamil cinema's more distinctive directors.

No release date has been announced yet. With the teaser now doing the rounds, that's the next thing to watch for, along with whether Selvaraghavan's turn as the antagonist ends up being more than a curiosity.