REVIEW 428: OOZHAM – IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME

Release date:	September 8, 2016
Director:	Jeethu Joseph
Cast: Language:	Prithviraj Sukumaran, Divya Pillai, Neeraj Madhav, Jayaprakash Vittal, Pasupathy, Balachandra Menon, Kishore Sathya, Anson Paul, Tony Luke Malayalam

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

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	140 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/oozham-review-whats-a-fine-actor-like-prithviraj-doing-in-this-shoddy-film-2999764.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oozham_(2016_film)

REVIEW 427: OPPAM

Release date:	September 8, 2016
Director:	Priyadarshan
Cast: Language:	Mohanlal, Nedumudi Venu, Samuthirakani, Anusree Nair, Vimala Raman, Baby Meenakshi Malayalam

A bright young policewoman draws a connection between several seemingly unrelated ‘accidents’ in different parts of Kerala. Elsewhere a blind man is the only ‘eyewitness’ to a murderer’s escape from his crime scene. Priyadarshan’s Oppam brings together these two parallel threads to give us a thriller that starts off with immense promise but is gradually pulled down by its weak writing.

Sometimes though, even one positive element could make a film worthwhile, and when that element is Mohanlal in full flow, it is tempting to pretend that the film’s follies do not exist.

It so happens that Oppam has several more positives that sustain it for a while before you wake up to its minuses. There is that other Malayalam film legend Nedumudi Venu in a supporting role as a judge with a troubled past. It would take courage for any young actor to choose to share film space with these two greats but Baby Meenakshi does it with conviction and confidence as she plays the judge’s young ward with a tragic background, never once crossing the line from smart to over-smart or cute to irritatingly precocious as child actors often do.

Frankly, just watching Mohanlal playing a blind man without a single misstep and without caricaturing his character’s disability is worth the price of a ticket. Add to that a couple of memorable songs by the young composer group 4 Musics and cinematographer N.K. Ekhambram’s imaginative visuals of the film’s already breathtaking setting – Kerala – and as a viewer I found myself willing the film to be as good as the sum of these parts.

The long opening sequence alongside the credits, with M.G. Sreekumar singing Chinnamma adi for Lalettan’s character Jayaraman on a packed boat as it sails down an extensive expanse of clear water with lush greenery on all sides is to die for. The infectiously rhythmic Chinnamma adi and that later song picturised on Lalettan and Meenakshi, the more serenely melodic Minungum minnaminuge, are my earworms for the weekend.    

Jayaraman is a lift operator in a posh apartment complex and every resident’s favourite Man Friday. One of the occupants of the building is the former Supreme Court judge and retired Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court, Justice Krishnamoorthy (Nedumudi Venu) who is ridden with guilt at the memory of what he fears might have been a wrong conviction he handed down many years back. He entrusts Jayaraman with his secret and the care of a child he is bringing up (Nandini played by Meenakshi). When Jayaraman is later accused of a crime, he is forced to solve the case himself while struggling to save his own life and Nandini’s from a serial killer.

When the suspense saga initially unfolds, it is both disturbing and exciting. Mohanlal and Nedumudi Venu lend gravitas to the grim situation they find themselves in. Priyadarshan combines Ekhambram’s generous use of a wide-angle lens and low angle shots with the clarity in the sound design and the background score to conjure up an ominous atmosphere in the housing complex and elsewhere. The tension is further heightened by our worries for the kind-hearted Jayaraman. There are also some well-conceptualised red herrings scattered about to distract us from what is really going on.

All this is effective despite some needless interludes that spoil the flow such as an unfunny comedy track involving Mamukkoya, awkwardly handled interactions between the locals and Sikh families in Moorthy Saar’s building, and a loud Punjabi-Malayalam song that rivals the worst we’ve been seeing in wedding-obsessed north Indian films since Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge earned big money in the 1990s. There is an absolutely unnecessary, almost puerile scene in which Jayaraman gets an expression of romantic interest from the building’s freelance housemaid played by Vimala Raman, who of course looks 2-3 decades junior to Mohanlal. Apparently no mainstream Malayalam hero’s ‘hero-ness’ is complete unless we are provided evidence that he is attractive to at least one woman young enough to be his daughter.

Oh yes, and if we are to go by a very pointed conversation about age in Jayaraman’s home, we must believe that he is in the vicinity of 40. Considering that Mohanlal is 56 and looks well above it, this is a laughable aside.

Still, the first half of Oppam is absorbing. (Caution: spoilers ahead) By the second half though, it becomes clear that the mystery at the heart of the film has little heft and there is only so much that intimidating atmospherics can do to save a feeble screenplay.

Too many scenarios are contrived to take the story forward. For instance, why on earth would an old man who fears for his life remain in his flat when the entire building has deserted their homes to attend an event? Considering his connections in high places, why does he not seek police protection for himself and his ward from a potential murderer?

I get that Jayaraman is fiercely independent despite his blindness, that he has a heightened sense of hearing and smell which makes him an extraordinarily gifted individual. I am willing to buy into his Superman-like multi-tasking abilities and strength: he is a lift operator in the evening, runs a shop during the day, plays the violin and piano, sings masterfully, does social work, and is a skilled fighter. Let experts on music, martial arts and visual impairment analyse that. What is hard to digest though is that an intelligent man like him would choose to confine himself within a near-deserted school building with a child who is being targeted by a serial killer, instead of escaping from there.

I get that the murder of an influential individual would place pressure on the police to quickly solve the case, and I get that in such circumstances police have been known to frame innocents simply to make a show of closing the file, but why would a colleague who has a seemingly credible theory about the homicide not share her concerns with the team right at the start before they get so deeply embroiled in their framing efforts that they would not be interested? I get that police departments in India are overworked, poorly trained, lack resources, lack inter-jurisdictional cooperation and are ridden with corruption, but is the Kerala Police so stupid that they do not sense a serial killing when the killer leaves behind a signature plus there is a glaring link between all the victims, and only one woman in the entire force notices?

Oppam might still have survived all this, but its fatal flaw is that it is needlessly stretched after the murderer’s identity, his motive and his next target are revealed, and he discovers that target’s location. Samuthirakani as the villain Vasudevan is suitably enigmatic and menacing at first, but suffers from zero characterisation. That threatening finger and the raucously laughing silhouette are more silly than scary. The needlessly elongated final 45 minutes become boring and almost inane after a point. The climax features a couple of chilling moments, but they are not enough compensation for the director’s transparent effort to manipulate us by over-extending it. 

Oppam is technically polished, visually appealing and features a fantastic performance by Mohanlal. It is also pointlessly long-drawn-out and after a while, pretentious in its effort to scare.

Rating (out of five): **1/2

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	152 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/oppam-review-mohanlal-is-fantasic-in-this-over-stretched-priyadarshan-thriller-2998790.html

Posters courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppam

REVIEW 423: IDI / INSPECTOR DAWOOD IBRAHIM

Release date:	Kerala: August 12, 2016. Delhi: August 26
Director:	Sajid Yahiya
Cast: Language:	Jayasurya, Sshivada, Sunil Sukhada, Molly Kannamaly, Saiju Kurup, Joju George, Yog Japee Malayalam

Imagine a little kid born in Kerala being named Dawood Ibrahim by his parents. Life for him would perhaps be even more challenging than it was for an African-American with the middle name Hussein and a surname that rhymes with Osama in post-9/11 America.

Little Dawood Ibrahim of our story grows up to be a policeman and is sent off to Kollanahalli village on the Kerala-Karnataka border. It is the kind of posting assigned to no-gooders, not to a promising new entrant. The police station in Kollanahalli is dilapidated, the facilities there so unused that when a phone rings for the first time in years, the lizard that had made the instrument its home is startled. Nothing but petty crime – goat and chicken thefts – take place in this outback of God’s Own Country, and all scores are settled by and within the community. That is, until Inspector Dawood Ibrahim takes matters into his own hands.

Whatever it is you think happens next, you are wrong. The opening scenes of debutant writer-director Sajid Yahiya’s Inspector Dawood Ibrahim imply that we are in for a hardcore masala film with an invincible cop at the helm, Jayasurya doing a Suriya in Singham style, complete with slow-mo, swagger and a signature song. Wrong again.

Inspector Dawood Ibrahim (abbreviated in the title to IDI, which is also the Malayalam word for a blow/punch) is a clever spoof on regular commercial cop dramas – clever, because it is designed to please consumers of unabashedly massy fare as much as those who are cynical about such content. And so, it features plenty of biff, boom, bang, loud music and dialoguebaazi, but each time you think it is about to fall into a formulaic rut, each time you wonder if it has begun to take itself seriously, it turns around and laughs at itself in the face.

It takes a while for the film to reveal its intentions, but once it does IDI is a fun ride right down to the sidesplitting ending. Note of caution: you had better stay glued to the screen in the climactic fight, because if you miss that split-second flash of a throne turning to something else and then back, you may miss the realisation that at this point too, nothing may be what it seems. 

Jayasurya, who is currently also in theatres with the comparatively insipid Pretham, is a joy to watch as a policeman whose circumstances are scoffing at him. It is always nice to see such a major star in self-deprecating mode. In this particular instance, the star is taking the mickey out of not just his own role or his own film, but all commercial police films across Indian industries. He embodies the film’s Dawood: striking, good-looking, perfectly suited to those low-angle shots that build him up as an imposing figure, filled with hopes of vanquishing villains to a resounding background score, only to realise that real life is not a mainstream Indian movie.

The rest of the cast do precisely what they are required to do: Yog Japee as the international don Akbar Ali and Saiju Kurup as the crook operating in Mangalore overact appropriately. Joju George as the local petty criminal Vasu is by turns fearsome and fearful. Sunil Sukhada and Molly Kannamaly cracked me up in their roles as Dawood’s sidekicks Kuttanpilla and Angel Mary. Thanks to them, never again will I be able to see an incoming call from an “unknown caller” on my phone without doubling up with laughter. Yes it is true that their looks are used here as metaphors for the decrepit Kollanahalli police station, but to be fair, IDI does not pick on anyone in particular, it picks on everyone. If you must be non-PC, this is how you do it.

IDI’s dialogue writing by Arouz Irfan (who co-wrote the screenplay with Yahiya) is smart and cocks a snook at so many clichés. Even the smattering of potty jokes are bearable because the film never lets up on its self-effacing tone. I am not sure the English lines dished out by Akbar Ali were intentionally awkward, but wittingly or unwittingly they have ended up matching his wannabe-grandiose character. 

There are plenty of plot points that can be viewed as weak links in IDI, including the ludicrous implausibility of a gangster sought after by Interpol deciding to personally respond to a summons of sorts by an unknown cop in a deserted outpost, yet it works. Because every apparent weak link could also be explained away as an attempt to underline the inherent stupidity in most commercial films about police and undercover spies that we are willing to buy into when the film effectively compels us to suspend disbelief. I mean, c’mon, we’ve bought into the efficacy of Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt’s many disguises in the Mission Impossible series, we have willingly swallowed Bruce Willis/John McClane’s physical indestructibility in the Die Hard series, so why would we not accept the probability of a wanted criminal being an idiot or the possibility that a policeman may indeed only always blink in slow motion? And why would we not believe that there is no weapon more lethal in this world than a Malayali man’s mundu?

The film’s major failing is its extreme male-centricity, extreme even by the low gender-related standards of commercial Indian cinema. Ninety per cent of the scenes in IDI do not feature even a female extra? Sshivada plays a spunky IIM-Ahmedabad graduate called Nithya Niranjan who bases herself in Kollanahalli because she wants to make a difference. That one scene in which she bashes up two cowering crooks is enough proof of the actress’ and the character’s potential to elevate IDI, yet Yahiya uses her as the only thing heroines are meant to be when seen through a blinkered male gaze: the hero’s ‘love interest’. Even that angle gets short shrift.

Crime and cop flicks tend to be male-centric, but some of the best of the lot – the ones that have risen above the formulae this film is parodying – have given women substantial, even if not primary, roles. What would the Suriya-starrer Kaakha Kaakha have been without Jyothika and the character she played? Would Ghajini (the original Tamil version with Suriya or the Hindi remake with Aamir Khan) have been the same without the depth and space given to Asin’s character? Women are not mere asides to be loved or lamented you know, Mr Yahiya. Obviously this is a potential element lost to IDI.

The film’s production design by Rajeev Kovilakam and cinematography by Sujith Sarang are effective. Sarang, for one, manages to successfully convey the desolation of Kollanahalli within picturesque surroundings. Dawood’s booming theme music by Rahul Raj is in keeping with the mood of the film, but none of the songs is memorable.

For the most part though, Inspector Dawood Ibrahim is an interesting police flick, a hysterical spoof of the genre and of itself. Even its over-the-top-ness is a mockery of over-the-topness. The pride and flourish with which the protagonist refers to the Kerala Police is a reminder of the parochialism, regionalism and nationalism often summoned up to earn wolf whistles in films of this genre. Remember the repeated referencing of Marathi pride in the Hindi version of Singham starring Ajay Devgn? Know this from IDI: you can bash up a Kerala policeman, bring him to his knees, abduct the father he loves and terrorise the old man, but God forbid that you should insult his uniform. Hell hath no fury like a Malayali cop whose khaki topi you are about to step on.

Of course it is all very silly and OTT. It is thoroughly entertaining though because it does not pretend to be anything but that, because it manages to not be condescending at any point, and most of all because within the realm of silliness it does not insult our intelligence.

Rating (out of five): ***

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	128 minutes

Censorship footnote: Although there are plenty of fisticuffs in Inspector Dawood Ibrahim, the camera does not show us much blood. The only disturbing shot in the film is of a man running a pencil through a person’s head, in through one ear and out of the other. This is the sort of scene for which the US ratings agency CARA would have perhaps rated a film PG, which signifies that parents may possibly want to check out a film before taking their children to see it. PG is a relatively mild rating, yet not the most lenient of them all, which is G indicating suitability for general viewing across age groups. India’s Central Board of Film Certification is known to be open to children viewing violence but not even an allusion to sex. The makers of IDI know this, which is why they have voluntarily beeped out the word “motherfucker” in a conversation without being asked to do so. The result: this film has been rated U (suited for universal viewing, the Indian equivalent of G) despite the pencil-through-the-head-of-a-human-being scene which should have earned it a UA, the Indian equivalent of PG. The only change the Board demanded was the removal of a shot of a man licking blood, which has been replaced in the film with a shot of some hooligans.

A version of this review has been published on Firstpost:

http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/inspector-dawood-ibrahim-review-jayasurya-is-fun-to-watch-in-this-spoof-on-cop-films-2979726.html

Posters courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Dawood_Ibrahim

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zWxR-EXvwM