Kuttavum Shikshayum [dir. Rajeev Ravi] - Theeran Adhigaram Ondru [dir. H. Vinoth]

"There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before", says Sherlock Holmes in his debut adventure A Study in Scarlet, when recommending his Scotland Yard colleagues to brush up on their knowledge of crime history. A similar sense of déjà vu struck me when I heard about Rajeev Ravi's 2022 Malayalam film Kuttavum Shikshayum (KS) aka Crime and Punishment. In the story a task force of policemen from Kerala in Southern India travel far to the North of the country to solve a case of burglary by itinerant criminals. The film is based on a true-life robbery that occurred in Kasargod district in Kerala, and going by this 2018 article describing the incident, a fairly faithful take on the reported facts.

The déjà vu came from my recollection of a 2017 Tamil film Theeran Adhigaram Ondru (roughly, Theeran is Law), in which a team of cops from Tamil Nadu (TN) in the South heads to a remote village in Rajasthan (in North India) to capture the gang behind a series of violent burglaries down South. I initially thought that perhaps both films were inspired by the same incident, but soon learned that the Tamil film (by H. Vinoth) was a cinematic take on a different real-life crime spree, which occurred over a period from 1995-2005: the gang, functioning as transport workers driving goods lorries across the country, would break into affluent households along the highway, killing residents and fleeing beyond state borders with their loot, leaving the local police flummoxed. After a painstaking investigation to figure out their modus operandi, this was eventually countered by the TN state police with Operation Bawaria.

What is interesting is the different approach of the makers. Theeran... is certainly the more ostentatious, with a clear focus on being a action-packed star vehicle. Even as part of a team investigating the case lead actor Karthi's character of Theeran is given the haloed treatment. A significant chunk of the film's runtime is squandered on a cloying romance track and there is even an 'item' song in the criminals' lair. The brutal and murderous crimes associated with the Bawaria gang allowed Theeran to take a sensationalistic approach in depicting them, even using stylized animation to make palatable the bloody history of those dacoits. They are imbued with animal shades, imitating the actions of a wolf pack on the hunt. The hero undergoes emotional violence when his beloved wife is savagely assailed by the gang; this adds a deeply personal revenge motive for his subsequent actions. The police team's attempt to capture the dacoits (captained by a ferocious Abhimanyu Singh) lead to an explosive night-time shootout that goes all out on the thrills.

Theeran Adhigaram Ondru is currently streaming in India on Prime and Hotstar.

In contrast, KS is tamped down to a fault, almost. Asif Ali as the inspector heading the investigation is the nominal lead, but he is not significantly marked out from the rest of the ensemble cast. In burdening the audience with the minutiae of the investigation - like the extended portion where they are tracking mobile phone locations - Ravi seems to be not only interested in conveying details of procedure, but also the soul grinding nature of the policeman's job. Hardcore fans of CSI style narratives may find this preoccupation with the mundane thrilling; others might feel that the film steps a little over the line between expressing the tedium of the characters' lives and transferring some of it to the audience. The criminals here are not like Theeran's heinous demons. Poverty and false promises from local politicians have driven the villagers to robbery and smuggling, the local law authorities state as matter-of-fact. They stand together as a defense against outsiders including the law - The film's most memorable scene at least for me was where Asif Ali's team walks through the maze of village lanes at mid-day to find it deserted of all the men; when they turn back the women form a posse and drive them out. But at the same time, they are not vicious cop killers.

On paper, KS's dedication to being a true-to-reality crime procedural sounds great, but what it jettisons in terms of drama is not sufficiently made up for in the treatment (film writer Aswathy Gopalakrishnan, whose reviews I respect a good deal is more enthusiastic). The characters are sketchy one-note cliches - Asif Ali has a guilt complex over shooting dead a student rioter, Alencier Lopez is the benevolent sub-inspector on the verge of retirement doling out parental advice, Sunny Wayne the cocky constable who predictably commits a blunder at a critical point in the film. The villagers harboring the criminals have almost no personality. Apart from the aforementioned scene of them being driven out by the women, there is little tension built in the execution, and I did not feel sufficiently attached to the main cast members to worry about the success of their mission. KS remains eminently watchable, just not memorable.

Kuttavum Shikshayum is currently streaming in India on Netflix.