The feel good area has always been the comfort zone for director Jis Joy, and when he went out of his way with Innale Vare, it didn’t get much love. Thalavan, his new film is a police investigation drama and yet another attempt by Jis to crack a particular zone. It’s not a boring film really, with two powerful actors in strong roles doing justice to their parts. The only thing that could have made the movie slightly more interesting would have been a neater construction for the antagonist.
SI Karthik Vasudevan who has got five transfers during his one and half years of service gets his appointment in a police station in Kannur. Karthik’s outspokenness and defiance of hierarchy rubs CI Jayashankar the wrong way. Somewhere along the cold war between them, there’s murder in CI’s house and political figures decide to assign Karthik with finding the killer.
What we see happening throughout this film is how hardworking Karthik tries to find murderer while Jayashankar does whatever it takes to prove his innocence.
Although it isn’t consistent at keeping up with thriller bits, what really works for this movie is character dynamics establishment. These rough edges between characters are established quickly, they don’t look forced at all. You can tell that Karthik genuinely hates taking orders from anyone else besides himself. So these people like each other so much that as soon as they start investigating jointly some interesting things begin happening in the story. The film slows down a bit when both characters find themselves trapped together somewhere. That said though, I must admit that the arc of the antagonist is really good, it’s just that his exposure could have had more thrill in it.
Asif Ali has more screen time than anyone else and he does quite an excellent job with portraying arrogance of Karthik who is different from any other character he has ever played before. This guy looks tough as nails because there’s always this unflinching confidence shining through his eyes making him appear hard as stone or steel man even when confronted by Jayashankar whom he knows can take away everything from him including life itself without blinking an eye once. Biju Menon plays Jayashankar differently than how he did Ayyappan Nair.
He’s louder here plus there’s swagger which makes one feel like this person would definitely win over another person in any given situation no matter what happens next whatsoever wherever whatever why am I still doing this? Kottayam Nazeer gets Reghu who is just a grey shade police officer while Dileesh Pothan was okay with DYSP Udayabhanu for some reason but Anusree and Miya don’t have much screen time at all in this movie so don’t expect anything great coming out of them either unfortunately. Bilas Chandrahasan got very meaty role and performed all its shades brilliantly.
The Anand Thevarkkatand-Sarath Perumbavoor script does something that any movie tries to do when it’s a thriller, and that is find the balance between the familiar and the cinematic. This was done brilliantly through subtle foreshadowing of the villain and his backstory. However, there are too many decoys in this film so much so that they become obvious by the time we get to act three. A successful thriller script is one where you are made to believe in a possibility but with a decoy character placed by the makers, this cleverness wasn’t here. You could easily identify them as inconsequential ones.
Each frame of the movie gives an intense feeling due to its wide aspect ratio and medium close up shots. But technically this was one of its weakest points fights were not well executed or edited together (be it fight inside jail or final one inside antagonist’s house), which made them look very staged for me possibly because action choreography lacked something somewhere along line. Another thing that disappointed me slightly was using such an appealing Thalavan title track for an area looking ambiguous rather than thrilling. I mean why?
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