Race Malayalam Movie
The similarities that Kukku Surandran's 'Race' bears to the recently released 'Cocktail' that in its turn was inspired from 'Butterfly on the Wheel' are amazing. It's another matter altogether that 'Race' has none of the liveliness associated with 'Cocktail' that made the latter film interesting, despite being a straight lift.
In 'Race', it's Dr. Eby John (Kunchacko Boban) who is caught in a race against time with his wife Niya (Mamta Mohandas), when their daughter is kidnapped by a stranger by the name of Niranjan (Indrajith) and his accomplice Shwetha (Gouri Munjal). The couple desperately tries to amass the ransom in 24 hours to save their kid, only to find that Niranjan has raised it by another crore.
'Race' suggests that the Malayalam industry might very well have latched on to its next most favorite obsession since the elder-brother syndrome. There is every possibility that we might be fed with an overdose of Guns 'n Lasses pretty soon, since the thriller genre is what has caught the fancy of film makers, at the moment.
The script in 'Race' is moth eaten and there would be very few who wouldn't be able to guess the rest of it after the first ten minutes unfurl on screen. And sadly, all our assumptions turn out to be right, and there are no bolts from the blue lying in wait around the corner.
The dialogues in 'Race' are pretty much dismal, and when Shwetha asks Eby as to why he is so much upset (over his daughter being kidnapped!), Eby replies that she should think of herself in the place of a father (!) if she should understand the trauma that he is going through.
Quite surprisingly, there is an entire sequence in 'Race' that we just saw a couple of months back in the Suresh Gopi film 'Kanyakumari Express'. Now this one is a huge twist of fate indeed, since both the sequences look exactly the same. It would remain too big a coincidence if two writers would think on exactly the same lines, unless of course they were motivated by the same source.
The lead actors are all competent ones in 'Race', and Indrajith towers over the rest of them, especially in the climax. Gouri Munjal is the one who looks out of the picture in the film, and given her role, one would never understand why she remains decked up like a doll throughout. Jagathy is an actor who very really disappoints, and in 'Race' even the seemingly impossible happens, and the actor cast in the role of a man who has a stammer struggles to keep his head above the water.
'Race' is no 'Butterfly on the Wheel', and given its lame script, it cannot even aspire to be a 'Cocktail'. It's a wannabe cat and mouse thriller that tries to keep you on the edge of your seats. But with the thin thrills and clunky dialogues, that would indeed be a bit too much to expect from 'Race'.
