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Release date:
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September 8, 2016
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Director:
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Jeethu Joseph
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Cast:
Language:
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Prithviraj Sukumaran, Divya
Pillai, Neeraj Madhav, Jayaprakash Vittal, Pasupathy, Balachandra Menon,
Kishore Sathya, Anson Paul, Tony Luke
Malayalam
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It is hard to believe
that the man who made Drishyam and Papanasam made this film too.
Oozham – It’s Just A Matter of Time is directed
by Jeethu Joseph who has been the toast of the national film circuit since the
release of Drishyam starring Mohanlal
in 2013. That film was so finely crafted, well-written, well-acted and entertaining
that it was appreciated by both audiences and reviewers, including those who
criticised Joseph for not acknowledging what they believed was his inspiration,
the Japanese novel The Devotion of
Suspect X. The Malayalam Drishyam was
remade in four Indian languages, and Joseph himself helmed the Tamil remake Papanasam with Kamal Haasan, arguably an
even better film than the first. How do you go from that to this? How do you go from Drishyam to Oozham in a span of just three years? How?
Everything about this one
is embarrassingly shoddy, from the shallow script that would look bad on a
junior school kid’s CV to the heavy-handed dialogues, the dreadful acting by some
of the supporting cast and indifferent production quality. Prithviraj is no
doubt sincere in his effort to lend believability to his role as an anguished
son and brother out to avenge an injustice, but it is hard to forgive him for
not having sensed a non-starter while reading the script.
Oozham’s screenplay
saddles the actors with the most absurdly gauche lines ever written in English
for a Malayalam film – lines so bad that they immediately reminded me of
another Mollywood disaster from recent months, Uday Ananthan’s White starring Mammootty and Huma
Qureshi. It is hard to believe that someone has actually matched Mammukka’s
Prakash Roy telling the heroine of White
on her birthday, “I never wanted to be the first person to wish you, neither the
last. But I wanted to be a person to wish you.”
The conversations
in Oozham are conducted in a mix of
Malayalam, Tamil and bombastic, grammatically poor English. The corrupt
industrialist Wilfred Marquez (Jayaprakash Vittal), for instance, glares at a
hired hand and bellows, “How dare!” at him, because I suppose the pronoun “you”
at the end of that sentence would have required too much of an effort. He does
this twice, not once – yes, I counted.
Now excuse me while
I fall off my chair laughing at the mere memory of these absurdities.
(Pause, while the writer
picks herself off the floor.)
Okay, so where was
I? Oh yes, Oozham. Surya
Krishnamoorthy (Prithviraj Sukumaran) is home on a break from his job in the US
to spend time with his family – his father Krishnamoorthy (Balachandra Menon)
who is a health department official in Tamil Nadu, his mother Subbahlakshmy and
sister Aiswarya. Soon after, tragedy strikes them and the family of Krishnamoorthy’s
friend, the honest top cop SP Parthasarthy (Kishore Sathya).
Investigations by Surya,
his friend/adoptive brother Ajmal Mohammed (Neeraj Madhav) and Parthasarthy’s
sister Gayathri (Divya Pillai) lead them to the corrupt industrialist Wilfred
Marquez. This sets them off on a trail of revenge which they execute with equal
parts professionalism and idiocy. The trio’s foolishness matters not, since
Wilfred, his sons Edward and Andrew, the explosives expert they hire for their
security (Anand Chathuranga a.k.a. Captain played by Pasupathy), the entire
staff of their Rs 5,000 crore company and the Police are all even more foolish.
Surya is adept at bomb
making and heads the operation. Ajmal/Aju is a cyber specialist. And Gayathri
is a specialist in squeezing herself into a short tight skirt and tight
sleeveless top to attract the playboy Andrew. Because you cannot expect a girl
to know about bombs and cyberspace, I guess?
As an American crime
show junkie, this film made me want to scream in exasperation at the tackiness
of the proceedings and Team Oozham’s
lack of even a skeletal knowledge of criminal investigations and procedures.
Forget that, this film lacks an understanding of simple questions relating to
computers and the social media. These days I am watching Season 13 of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) starring Mariska Hargitay – one of
my all-time favourites – and I would like to apologise to the makers because I grumbled
to a friend this week that the quality of the writing in SVU has declined since Season 1. I apologise because SVU exists on the same planet as Oozham and I was still finicky enough to
fuss about it.
Now excuse me while
I bow my head in contrition.
(Pause, while the
writer observes a moment of silence.)
It is hard to believe
that the man who made Drishyam and Papanasam could come up with this tripe.
In one scene, a senior cop stares at a laptop trying to figure out how to get
past the screen saver. I kid you not, he does not seem to know that clicking a
key could make it disappear.
Okay, let us put that
down to poor police training with new technology. After all, women victims of
cyber crimes in the far more moneyed West have reported being asked
pre-kindergarten-level questions by police personnel in their local precinct.
But can someone explain
how a supposed tech wiz like Captain is not aware of the basics of a digital
search? In one unintentionally comical scene, Captain sees the hero’s name
written as “Surya Krishna Moorthy” in a file. He searches for “Soorya
Krishnamoorthy” on Facebook, finds no one – of course, since a misspelt name on
this social networking site will not throw up the person you are looking for –
and immediately gives up.
Why, Jeethu Joseph, why?
Now excuse me while
I go off to weep in solitude over this sorry moment in Malayalam cinema.
Rating
(out of five stars): 1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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140 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
Your description of the scene where the cop checks the laptop does not seem to be accurate: When we see the laptop screen, we can see the toolbar, with a visible icon of Skype int he running programs. He was going to click on the Skype icon, when some distraction came and he had to go away. What I am trying to say is that it was NOT the screensaver that he saw - it was the home screen, with all programs minimized (Remember,earlier in the movie where the father says that whenever someone comes how the sister 'minus'es the skype window).
ReplyDeleteHe stares at the screen for what must have been several minutes in real time, conveying confusion about what to do, until he is called away. I'm pretty sure of my description, but since you have planted a seed of doubt in my head, I'm willing to suffer the film again when it comes on TV (it's no longer in Delhi theatres) simply to cross-check this point. I will get back to you then. Thanks for being polite while keeping me on my toes - that is so rare on the Internet.
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