After a very long time, with immense pleasure, saw a Malayalam movie setting fire at the Malayalam box offices, through the Sreenath Rajendran directed, Dulquer Salman starer and most awaited film called “Kurup”. Since the day of its announcement, the movie caught the attention of every Malayali because of their immense excitements around the real life “Kurup” and the original case from around four decades ago.
The movie starts with the retirement of the Circle Inspector Krishnadas, along with one of his juniors coming up noticing the black diary bulging with notes of the “Sudhakara Kurup” case which is about the longest elusive fugitive till date. Hence, the narration style of the movie takes off from the perspective of every individual who is actually related to Kurup and finally ends with the perspective of Kurup himself. Even though this aspect of the film, set in the bygone era was well thought, the writing eventually failed in the first half and made the film solely depend upon the visuals, performance and the background score, as it looses the grip on the plot and nothing could be done to save the film. This becomes even more glitchy when the people know about the original events that were the inspiration for this story. Even the narration ends up climaxing with an iconic villan charm on the screen, giving a certain level of glorification to the person who, even in the real life story has a lamster appeal.
The second half was well packed and had presented a wacky and tricksy “Kurup”. But Rajendran has neither portrayed him with any ‘Rajinikanth‘ kind of mass appeal nor had him perform any such acts for the audience to cheer. The real life characters are thinly veiled into the film’s storyline and hence, it was easy for the makers to use their artistic liberty.
The entire show was stolen by Shine Tome Chacko in the first half and Indrajith Sukumaran, in the second half, eventually surpassed by the enigmatic transformation of Dulquer Salman. Surabhi Lakshmi, Sunny Wayne, Shobhitha, Vijaya Kumar Prabhakaran, Bharath, etc had supported the movie well thru their performances.
The audience were glued to the screen by the shots taken by Nimish Ravi which helped in transporting them back to the 70s and 80s. The costume department, the make up department and the art department did help in pulling off the aesthetics of that bygone era and thereby helped to set our minds into that era throughout the film.
The music by Sushin Shyam helps a lot by being the framework of the film without which it would be impossible to carry out such a risky plot to the audience. Vivek Harshan tried his best to make the movie short and simple but has lost its flow during some parts of the movie.
Overall: Kurup – is indeed a fictional crime drama, inspired from a real crime, which has glitches in its first half and then it rebounds with its grip in the second half. Rating -2.5/5.
