IG Malayalam Movie
If there's one statutory rule that needs to be imposed with out fail this moment, it's an unconditional ban on the cop flicks that are so obsessed with glitz that they fail to thrill. B. Unnikrishnan's IG proclaims a been-there-and-done-that inertness in each frame that makes it a stylish and swanky but an extremely silly piece.
IG Durga Prasad (Suresh Gopi) has gone up on the ranks as the title asserts, but he's in essence an umpteenth replication of a Balram, a Bharath Chandran or a Baba Kalyani. He's in charge of the Anti Terrorist Squad determined to deracinate every last bit of an extremist attack that has been designed to blow up Trivandrum into smithereens.
All those prerequisites of a police drama are rigorously upheld right to the last bit. The super cop makes an entry after a long winding chase and beating up a few crooks begging for it, and starts bellowing at the CM and ministers pretty soon. The customary digs at the political scenario follow suit, and then the routine degradation of the seniors in the burly hands of the indomitable hero.
Time to bring in an adversary, preferable a female (a lawyer, this time), who would realize in course of time that the world needs men like our man. Spice it all up with hard sounding and often indistinguishable dialogues in the Queen's language, a villain mouthing all possible languages on the planet and a climax that's drenched in tons of ketchup, and you have just been through yet another edition of Cop Capers.
Perhaps the intention to bring in the IG's kin into the whole picture and interlace emotions with the rest of the hi-fi account, was meant to work up a familial feel. It wholly backfires though, and almost the entirety of those scenes sticks out like a punk duck.
Not any amount of Vande Mataram that blares in the background is likely to help generate feelings of patriotism in the viewer, if the film doesn't have a point to make. Or if it doesn't do so convincingly. I'm not sure about you, but I'm not in the mood to gulp down any more of the religious amity stuff in films. Nor several other worn-out recipes for a sure shot box office run.
There are lots of set pieces that don't really build in the film. All they do is pile up. So no marks for guessing who Eagle, the brains behind the entire wicked design is. There's nothing mind-blowing about those action sequences either. It has come to a point when explosions aren't that amusing any more.
Gopi actually seems to have a gala time donning the uniform yet again. And he is good, as always. However, Shyam Dutt is the man who saves the film from being a downer on all accounts. His camera comes up with a few surprises on its own, unmindful of the scope that the script offers.
This isn't really an agitated rant against a disposable crime thriller that failed to entertain me. As the IG himself puts it across, this is righteous indignation pouring straight out of a movie lover's heart.
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