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Release date:
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May 5, 2017
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Director:
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Amal Neerad
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Cast:
Language:
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Dulquer Salmaan, Karthika Muralidharan, Chandini Sreedharan, Siddique, Soubin
Shahir, Dileesh Pothan, Jinu Joseph
Malayalam
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Comrade In America (C.I.A.) is 5 parts Comrade, 5 parts the trip to America, all
parts Dulquer Salmaan. Comical comrades and Salmaan are the USPs of this recipe,
which is neither an all-out tribute to Communism (as the recent Oru Mexican Aparatha and Sakhavu were), nor an indictment of the ideology and
its practice. Communism is for the most part a backdrop here, the setting
against which the hero does his growing up.
Salmaan plays C.I.A.’s Aji Mathews a.k.a. Ajipan, a Left party
member in Kerala at political loggerheads with his father Mathews (Siddique) who
is with the Kerala Congress (KC). Aji is popular and for now, an unemployed
layabout reluctant to let go of his college days when he walked tall among admiring
fellow students. He now spends his time visiting the campus when he is not at
the party office or playing football with friends, participating in protests
against KC corruption and distributing Deshabhimani.
What we do not know about him at first is that he is as committed to his
girlfriend Sarah Mary Kurian (Karthika Muralidharan) as he is to his ism.
(Possible spoilers
ahead) And so one day he takes off on one
of the world’s most arduous road trips, to the global headquarters of
Capitalism where she lives. America is the antithesis of everything he believes
in, which makes his decision to visit the place the ultimate proof of his love,
arguably even more than that challenging journey where violence and death lurk
at every turn. The people he meets on the way, the lessons he learns through
them and at the end of that expedition have a life-changing impact on him. (Spoiler alert ends)
It is an intriguing concept, made all the more promising by the cast,
each with a highly likeable screen presence. The distance from intriguing
concept to wholesome film is a hard trek though. And despite physically crossing
oceans and continents, Comrade In America (C.I.A.) does not make
it.
Director Amal Neerad’s latest film is certainly not a write-off though.
It is hard to write off any film featuring the incredibly charismatic Dulquer
Salmaan, understated humour and such amusing, inventive, well-executed guest
appearances. Still, there is only so much that boyish handsomeness, low-key
laughter and the kernel of a good idea can do.
Travel is always educational. Imagine then the potential of a voyage
through poverty-stricken lands where nature and human beings hold out equal
threats. C.I.A. strides purposefully towards that excursion, brimming
with possibilities and then fizzles out, a victim of reed-thin writing and
flimsy characterisation.
When the going is good (mostly in the first half of the film), it is
pretty good. And so you wait in the second half, initially buoyed by the
atmospherics, and you wait and you wait and you wait to figure out where this
is headed, until at last you resign yourself to the sad reality that this film
is going nowhere.
So yes, Salmaan’s comic timing is on point as always – barring one
fleeting yet distastefully comedified mention of male rape that panders to
general audience ignorance on the subject. I do wish filmmakers would not take
such issues lightly.
Salmaan’s heart-stopping good looks do not hurt. Aji’s equation with
his father is supremely entertaining. The vapidity of his interactions with his
young fellow Communists (played by the excellent Soubin Shahir and Dileesh Pothan)
is hilarious, without
any of the crassness that pervades films headlined by too many senior Malayalam
stars these days. C.I.A.’s occasional swipes at the present
establishment worldwide are well woven in – let us just say Modi and Trump bhakts
will not be pleased. And the cinematography delivers striking, picturesque
images without dwarfing the treachery of those landscapes.
The film scores high too with those three cameos that I am tempted to
reveal to you but will not. One big salaam, Lal Salaam if you wish, to the
person who found those three gentlemen actors who are such a perfect fit!
(Possible spoilers
ahead) After a point though, it has to be
asked: what is the point of it all? The writing completely fails to give life
to Sarah and to the motley group who join Aji on his walk across America, with
the exception of his Sri Lankan Tamil ally. The Indian woman in the bunch (Chandini Sreedharan) risks rape and death to make
that journey for the stupidest reason you could imagine, with no pressing
urgency unlike the others. Clearly she is there merely because a need was felt
to insert a second attractive young woman into the story, yet little thought
was given to her. The only thing less mindless than that is the discovery of what
drives Sarah. With all its pretensions to gravitas and novelty, C.I.A.
is just a reiteration of Mollywood’s view that all men are paavam potential
victims of female betrayal. (Spoiler
alert ends)
With almost the entire group reduced to sketchy clichés (example: the
traitorous Pakistani, the Chinese man who, in C.I.A.’s tackiest moment,
breaks into Gangnam Style because…well…because in Neerad’s stereotypical
view, that is what Chinese people do?) it becomes impossible to invest in them.
The result is that the film’s closing reference to the cause of refugees, comes
across as almost flippant because the lead-up to there lacks depth.
Comrade In America is an interesting idea that needed a better writer to expand it into a
full-fledged screenplay. Dulquer Salmaan’s charm, the Shahir-Pothan chemistry,
their wit and all those picture-postcard settings cannot camouflage C.I.A.’s
emptiness. These elements are sufficient compensation for the price of a
ticket, I guess, but in the ultimate analysis they do not add up, making this
an unmemorable film.
Rating
(out of five stars): *1/2
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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135 minutes
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This
review has also been published on Firstpost:
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