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Release
date:
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February 23, 2018
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Director:
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Najeem Koya
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Cast:
Language:
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Shebin Benson,
Joju George, Baburaj, Shammi Thilakan, Aiswarya Suresh
Malayalam
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Kaly is a film with a split personality. The first
half lolls about for too long establishing the six male leads, best
buddies from a lower middle class background in a Kerala city, who shoplift and
indulge in other petty criminal activities to sustain their obsession with
branded clothing and shoes. The second half is devoted to a plan that goes
completely awry with far-reaching consequences for them and a group of absolute
strangers.
The former is just
another clichéd storyline with clichéd characters featured so frequently in
commercial Malayalam cinema. We have seen them even recently in films ranging
from completely low-brow fare like Chunkzz
to the more tolerable Velipadinte Pusthakam, these directionless Malayali youth (students or unemployed
adults) hanging around doing nothing beyond drinking together, eating together,
picking fights with each other or others, behaving as if sightings of women are
rarer than visitations by Haley’s Comet, stalking women and having
conversations steeped in sexism, parochialism and colour prejudice.
It does not help
that in Kaly these roles are played
by an ineffectual lot of male artistes, while an equally ineffectual Aiswarya
Suresh contributes the token attractive female presence.
The rest of Kaly is the part with potential, when a
crime is committed, irresponsible behaviour has a ripple effect on everyone
around and the effort to cover up one wrong leads to another and another then
another, until you wonder how the persons mired in that situation could
possibly extricate themselves from their self-created mess.
What the writer of Kaly needed to do was dispense with the
first half almost entirely and invest just a little more thought in the writing
of the second to chop out its predictable portions and the trivialisation of
the leads’ earlier actions. It could then
have been a taut thriller on how casual crime can have disastrous
consequences and the differing police reactions to crime based on the
financial status of the victims and perpetrators. Its flaws
notwithstanding, it remains the tighter, better-written, better-acted part of Kaly.
The film takes too much
time to get here. Once it does, it takes a while as a viewer to settle into the
complete alteration in tone. That said, there is some fun to be had guessing
where everyone’s misdeeds will ultimately lead them.
From the moment of
arrival of the unscrupulous, conniving senior policeman played by Joju George, Kaly lifts off to another level. The
impact of this corrupt cop is the combined effect of the interesting
characterisation and George’s chameleon-like transformation from role to role.
His portrayal of amorality here is in sharp – and intriguing – contrast to the
stiff-necked, eccentric school principal he played just a few months back in
the Manju Warrier-starrer Udaharanam Sujatha.
It is as if a
completely new team is handling Kaly
post-interval, or the existing team had a proper night’s rest and then
proceeded to roll out the second half. Here is an idea, dear director Najeem
Koya: how about catching up on your sleep before, instead of after, starting
work on a film? Kaly is a
half-baked affair that looks and feels as if there is a good film lost
somewhere inside it.
Rating
(out of five stars): *
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CBFC Rating (India):
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U
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Running time:
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162 minutes
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This review was also published on Firstpost:
Hey Anna,
ReplyDeleteCould you review Kunju Daivam (Malayalam)?
Hi,
DeleteApologies for this inordinately late response. I have been extremely busy and have not checked, published or responded to comments on my blog since mid-2017 - I know, terrible excuse. Sorry.
Regarding Kunju Daivam, the film was not released in Delhi (which is where I live), therefore I did not review it. I did manage watch it towards the end of the year though, so I can tell you what I thought about it: Adish Praveen was excellent, so was Joju George and Kunju Daivam no doubt had its heart in the right place but I found it amateurish in the writing and technical departments. There was a good idea somewhere in there but it needed a better screenplay and greater polish .
If you liked the film, I hope I have not disappointed you.
Regards,
Anna