Shambu Malayalam Movie
When you find yourself holed up in a colossal cinema hall that looks more deserted than a spooky cemetery past midnight, watching a film that ironically gives you the lifeless creeps, you realize that writing about films isn't half as easy as you would like to believe.
Shambhu is a late installment in a series of campus politics capers, some of which had delivered the goods and some of which had sent the wagon toppling down the road. The calamity is pretty much catastrophic here; and there's nothing that would raise the film over the middle-of-the-road.
The film is full of senseless, cynical action, and unprompted and uninterrupted mayhem throughout. A weird mixture of vicious violence and fanciful farce, it feels more like a wobbly video that you shot in your backyard during one of your real terrible days.
This is a tale that you have been fed on, ever since you decided you wanted to watch films for the rest of your life. The naïve fresher guy who walks into a gang of campus hoodlums and who finally takes up the cudgel in protest and ends up in jail has been around for a while now.
More than a decade back, Vijaya Kumar had stomped into filmdom through an embarrassingly parallel role in 'Thalasthanam' and I can only wonder what they were thinking when they decided to throw the dice yet again for a game that they had already lost.
To be fair to the actor though, he does a good job, and goes through all those grumbles and grimaces, all the while trying to remain disengaged from that ghastly script that he knows has the life of a squashed mosquito.
The failure is pretty much even; as an action flick sans the punch, or the flat romance or the damp and real soggy emotions that clam up an already rambling narrative. It looks pretty bad as well, from all the rotting that had happened in the cans probably, and had something seriously wrong with its color schemes all the way through.
A special word of non-mention to the art direction that made a television news set strongly resemble a cardboard craft store, and to the editor scissors that had obviously been in too moderate a mood to do some serious chopping.
Oh, and before I forget, what on earth was that final act all about?
Shambhu is a movie that's weary almost to death with an air of desperation all about. This is perhaps the best of Vijay Kumar on film as yet, but I guess that isn't saying much.
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