REVIEW 774: FORENSIC

Release date:	February 28, 2020
Director:	Akhil Paul, Anas Khan
Cast: Language:	Tovino Thomas, Mamtha Mohandas, Reba Monica John, Saiju Kurup, Renji Panicker, Prathap Pothen, Rony David  Malayalam

Rithika Xavier (Mamtha Mohandas) is heading a police team investigating a child’s murder in Thiruvananthapuram when she realises she has a serial killer on her hands. Samuel John Kattukkaran (Tovino Thomas), the forensic scientist assigned to her, is a genius with a reputation for overreach. He has an old personal connection with Rithika.

From the moment Sam enters the picture, from the treatment and presentation of the character in his very first minutes on screen, we know it is he who will crack the case. Scenes are set up with the obvious intent of giving him an opportunity to prove his smartness. At first he patronises his junior colleague and throughout outshines the senior to whom he reports – both of them women, marking the token female presence so common in Malayalam cop sagas while men go about actually solving the crime/s at hand. 

Perhaps the only thing left was for Sam to wear a headband saying: “designated hero of the film.” Subtlety, you see, is not the forte of this crime thriller directed by Akhil Paul and Anas Khan. If you are willing to forgive Forensic its many venial sins on this front – since they are silly but never offensive in the way a certain kind of loud, misogynistic, male-star-driven Mollywood cinema is – you might enjoy this harmless crime drama up to a point, as I did. 

Until the last half hour or so when the killer is unveiled and motivations revealed, Forensic’s deductions are impressive enough and related in an easy enough fashion to make the film an entertaining ride. Sure, the background score should have been played down. Sure, several scenes are awkwardly constructed to pointlessly over-emphasise a point, but well, no one is saying Forensic is high art. Sure, an arrest made by Rithika in an old case recounted in the present was senseless, but that can be put down to standard police inefficiency, even if it seems inconsistent with the portrayal of Rithika. Sure, little thought has gone into two scenes of arrests when the police bring their suspects out in public with faces uncovered knowing that crowds are present outside. Sure, it is hard to believe that so many little girls were lured away by a charmless criminal. Sure all the above are true, but until that last half hour, Sam’s work sustains the film. 

I am not certain any Indian state police department has the facilities that Sam and his associate Shikha (Reba Monica John) have at their disposal – maybe they do, maybe they don’t, I am just wondering based on news reports and conversations with actual personnel that reveal how cripplingly ill-equipped police forces are in India. However, drawing on those very discussions, it does seem possible that a single Indian investigator might indeed have to be a Jack of all specialities within forensics, as Sam is shown to be in this film, due to a lack of available trained humanpower (far removed from the ultra-super-superspecialties I have been discovering through the addictive American real-life-crime series Forensic Files I have lately been binge-watching on Netflix). Either way, Sam is smart enough and his logic roughly convincing enough to a layperson for his investigation process to be engaging. 

Then the perpetrator is revealed, the identity is indeed unexpected, but Forensic sinks itself in the person’s convoluted, complicated, uninspiring back story. What made the recent release Anjaam Pathiraa so unforgettable was the heartbreaking crime that motivated its serial killer’s spree, the plausibility of the murder plan, the performances of the charismatic actors in that tragic back story and those bringing it to its present-day conclusion, plus the film’s insight into Kerala politics and society. In contrast, the reasons for the commission of the horrible crimes in Forensic are drowning in contrivances. Layer upon layer seems to have been added with the sole purpose of throwing in more surprises, except that they are not particularly meaningful or interesting. And since the audience has not been given an opportunity to be emotionally invested in the killer – either to be sympathetic or repulsed – it all adds up to a damp squib. 

The finale of this film is suicidal, trying too hard to be clever and ending up being too clever by half. 

This was really unnecessary, because Forensic is passable entertainment till then and some of the earlier unfolding twists are not half bad. It also has Thomas and Mohandas’ likeable personalities going for it and the actors’ comfort with their characters’ professions, Renji Panicker in a nice turn as a retired police official, an occasional sense of humour in the screenplay, the fact that it does not take the male protagonist down a conventional path of romance in the way most commercial Malayalam films do, and the other fact that he is not obnoxiously macho as so many leading men are in formulaic Mollywood police sagas.  

But what is a crime thriller if its central criminal is dull? The answer to that question is a summation of what Forensic has to offer.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.25

CBFC Rating (India):	UA
Running time:	134 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/forensic-movie-review-tovino-thomas-mamtha-mohandas-starrer-is-clever-till-it-gets-too-clever-by-half-8103381.html

Posters courtesy: IMDB

REVIEW 761: PRATHI POOVANKOZHI

Release date:	Kerala: December 20, 2019 Delhi: January 3, 2020
Director:	Rosshan Andrrews
Cast: Language:	Manju Warrier, Rosshan Andrrews, Anusree, Alencier Ley Lopez, Saiju Kurup Malayalam

As a woman, it is hard to watch this film and not have a flashback to the humiliating sexual assaults you have endured. In private and public spaces, millions of men continue to grab, grope, stalk, flash their genitals at women, masturbate on them or in their presence, sneer, leer, pass lewd comments, verbally abuse, prod and crush breasts, pinch bottoms, fondle midriffs and in numerous other ways molest, harass and dehumanise the other half of the human species. 

So yes, I understand Madhuri’s rage in Prathi Poovankozhi and I share it. 

It is precisely because the female experience of such male behaviour is so routine though that I also don’t understand Prathi Poovankozhi. In the film, Manju Warrier plays Madhuri, a salesperson in a Kottayam sari shop who is so enraged when a man squeezes her bottom on a bus one day, that she makes it her mission to slap him at least once. She gets a range of reactions to her intent, the sort we have all witnessed and/or personally faced in reality – supportive women, women recounting their own repulsive encounters with perverts, a woman fuming at that man, another fuming at Madhuri for not moving on, yet another blaming her for the perv’s actions. One comment by an ally bothered me though. This friend explains kindly that assaults are not unusual and if Madhuri is unable to get over this one it is because such a thing is happening to her for the first time. 

Hold on. 

Wait. 

Did I hear that right? This woman who has inhabited the earth for what I assume must be about three decades, who stays alone with her elderly mother, who works in a crowded space, who takes public transport and walks down teeming streets to her workplace each day, who attends social gatherings, this woman has...never...been...molested...before? Ever? Not by a relative, a colleague, an acquaintance, a neighbour, or even a stranger? 

Never? 

It is at this point I wished that writer Unni R. had hired women consultants for this screenplay. Because it takes a man to not know the frequency with which women get molested. It takes a man to not know that most women suffer harassment and molestation on multiple occasions in their lives. This is why, when as a woman you highlight an episode or two on a public platform, men friends think they are helping by badgering you to alert the authorities. Women allies, on the other hand, tend to just lend a listening ear, because they know that if a woman were to go to the police every single time she is harassed, she would have time for nothing else. That is how often it happens. 

It takes a well-meaning but partially informed man to write a heroine who is molested for the first time in her life when she is in her 20s/30s/thereabouts.

Most women who file official complaints do so when a particular attack drives them over the edge either because of its severity or for some other specific reason. Madhuri has no tipping point because she has never before been similarly targeted. 

It is a measure of Warrier’s arresting screen presence and acting, and the genuine concern Unni and director Rosshan Andrrews evidently have for women, that with all its flaws, Prathi Poovankozhi remains an engaging film. 

The title literally translates to “The Accused Rooster”, a play on words and the gender of most harassers since “kozhi” is Malayalam slang for a womaniser, a man of questionable morality and so on. 

Prathi Poovankozhi has been adapted for the big screen by Unni from his own short story Sankadam. It reunites Andrrews and Warrier after the former directed the superstar in 2014’s How Old Are You?, her comeback film following her post-marriage hiatus. 

This new film is both relatable and unrelatable, heartening and exasperating at the same time. It does not have the intellectual depth of director Sanal Kumar Sashidharan’s Ozhivudivasathe Kali (An Off-Day Game), which was based on another of Unni’s stories. That one showed an astonishing grasp of caste and gender politics. It also did not feature a single excessive moment, word, shot or scene. 

Prathi Poovankozhi is weighed down by a string of superfluities. The background score, for instance, shoots through the rooftop every time the villainous Antappan comes on screen, as if to beat into our skulls the point that he is the bad guy here. Madhuri has a mother with whom she is inexplicably perennially impatient. Alencier Ley Lopez plays a close family friend with whom she shares an entire playful song right at the start, which seems to indicate that he will later play a crucial role, but he contributes not a milli-inch of a difference to the plot. 

Grace Antony from Kumbalangi Nights plays a sweeper who looks important and says ominous-sounding things, which suggest that at some point we will get to know more about her or her association with Antappan. Ultimately, she too adds up to nought. 

More troubling is the satellite character played by Anusree – Madhuri’s best friend and colleague at the sari store, whose flirtations and relationships with several men seem, on the surface, to have been written into the script merely for their comedy value. A later conversation in which her deception involves a child-like innocent man seems to indicate though that she has been placed there to also assert that while the accused in this film may be a poovankozhi, the piddakozhi (hen) in our society ain’t no saint either.

This seems like Messrs Unni and Andrrews pre-empting the wrath of men who claim victimhood and float the hashtag #NotAllMen each time women speak up about discrimination. C’mon!

The only satellite character whose presence makes a legitimate point is the policeman played by Saiju Kurup. Through him we are reminded that sexual predators are everywhere, which of course contradicts the point earlier made when portraying the assault on the bus as unprecedented for Madhuri. 

That said, the usually dependable Kurup’s acting here is semi-comical and confusing. Competent artistes like Anusree and Antony are wasted in this film. In Anusree’s case this is a pity because she does manage to be funny while enacting her character’s shenanigans. 

Warrier, however, is well utilised and delivers an immersive performance as Madhuri. Watching her, you can almost see her rage physically and mentally consuming her. 

Andrrews has done well to step into the part of the creepy Antappan. Just seeing his expression when he mauls Madhuri sent a chill down my spine. He should, however, be held to account for roping Lopez into this project. When a man with grievous allegations of sexual wrongdoing against him is cast as a considerate friend of a woman battling sexual violence in a film, it is ironic, distracting and self-defeating. 

Cinematically and ideologically then, Prathi Poovankozhi is wracked with problems. Yet, whatever the criticisms of the film may be, it is also true that it is convincing and moving in part because Madhuri’s anger does not come from the same “avenging angel” cliché that birthed 22 Female Kottayam and Puthiya Niyamam in which unreal women survivors hatch elaborate schemes for vengeance. Madhuri’s actions in the final scene are realistic because they stem from a spontaneous anger that causes her to explode momentarily as a woman might, as women have been known to on occasion, in real life. 

The see-saw of emotions she runs through in the closing minutes of Prathi Poovankozhi – a sudden confusion in a darkened, decrepit house followed by a calm before an internal churn and finally, an eruption – are handled perfectly, barring the loud music. Madhuri’s brilliantly beautiful, credible rage lifts Prathi Poovankozhi above its own failings.

Rating (out of 5 stars): 2.5

CBFC Rating (India):	U
Running time:	102 minutes

This review has also been published on Firstpost:

https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/prathi-poovankozhi-movie-review-manju-warrier-and-a-brilliantly-beautiful-rage-make-up-for-scanty-confused-writing-7899481.html

Poster courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prathi_Poovankozhi