Gadar - Ek Prem Katha [dir. Anil Sharma]

In preparation for the sequel now showing in the cinemas, I watched 2001's Gadar - Ek Prem Katha (The Revolt - A Love Story). Confession, this is the first time I have seen the whole film, as opposed to bits and pieces, mostly from its crazy climax. At the time of Gadar's theatrical release I was more a Lagaan fanboy, and this was the 'rival' film. I have to say, flaws notwithstanding this is a "propah" old-skool Bollywood masala drama, probably the best film in Anil Sharma's career. Of course, that in itself that is hardly high praise: Sharma made his name in the industry with camp fodder like Hukumat (1987), Elaan-e-Jung (1989) and Tahalka (1992). His Farishtay (1991) was so disgusting in its crass humor I had to switch off after a bit on account of the ick factor. But something about Gadar appears to have clicked with the man; in consequence he has turned out a film with both craft and heart.

Gadar's story (loosely adapted from the real-life tragedy of one Boota Singh) is an archetype grandiose Bollywood romance drama set against the backdrop of post-independence India-Pakistan. Headliner Sunny Deol plays turban-clad Jat trucker Tara Singh, with Jaspal Bhatti alumnus Vivek Shauq as his comic sidekick. Tara Singh has the hots for upper-class Muslim student Sakina (Amisha Patel). When the partition of India happens, Sakina's family after narrowly escaping massacre in the Hindu-Muslim riots boards the train to Pakistan, but she gets caught in the stampede and is left behind. Later she hears that her family was killed enroute to Lahore. The gallant Tara rescues her from Hindu attackers and offers to escort her to relatives in Lahore. She opts to settle with him in India, and they bear a child as well. Later Sakina discovers her family alive and well in Pakistan, and it is arranged that she will visit them with her husband and son.

Alas, her father Ashraf Ali (Amrish Puri) is a prominent Pakistani politician and a bigot that hates India with a passion. In a bid to cut off his daughter's connections with the former homeland, he deceives her into traveling alone, then holds her captive in Lahore using emotional blackmail. Sensing that all is not right with Sakina, Tara decides he has to enter Lahore and get her back, even if it carries the deadly risk of being considered a spy. When his peaceful approaches with her high-placed family fail, our humble trucker wages a one-man war against a virtual battalion of the Pakistani armed forces.

The chemistry between the lead pair of Deol and Amisha Patel works well for Gadar and is the driving factor for on-screen events. You like the couple, and cheer for their attempts to come together. Sakina is inconsistent in the writing: Sometimes she is a total wallflower, reduced to crying in bed waiting for her "shohar" (husband) to rescue her, while in others she spiritedly defies her captors. In the climax she is even cocking a rifle, ready to fire at the military pursuers hunting her family. Still, Amisha conveys the right amount of sweetness for the part and comes across more dignified than most of her later on-screen and off-screen appearances. It has been my (snobbish) opinion that Sunny Deol plays the bulk of his characters with the subtlety of a truck driver / stevedore, so he is aptly cast in the trucker's part (although the accent he uses to address Sakina as "Madam ji" betrays a convent school education than how an actual illiterate person would say it). His Tara Singh displays an openhearted bonhomie in his happy moments, and when he gives vent to his anger, you sympathize and cheer for him. Veteran thespian Amrish Puri as Sakina's father gives a layered portrayal of villainy, caught between his possessive love for his daughter and his hatred for Indians.

Up to a point Gadar is fairly restrained compared to Sharma's other films (even though Deol always has the ability to beat up scores of people, and in one iconic scene, pulls out a hand-pump by its roots to clobber a mob). The climax involves Tara Singh & Co commandeering a goods train while they are pursued by convoys of soldiers and even an attack helicopter. It's ridiculous, but unabashedly so, and reminds one of the extravagant climaxes from Buster Keaton's The General, and Jackie Chan's Police Story 3: Supercop (reviewed HERE). Apart from a mid-movie slump where multiple song sequences are bunched together, Gadar is surprisingly well-paced by Bollywood standards; the 2hr56min experience was less of a slog than I feared. I only hope the sequel maintains that same trait.

The full movie is available to view (without subtitles) on the Zee Movies Hindi channel on Youtube:

Maamannan [dir. Mari Selvaraj]

Caste identity and discrimination has been the backbone of most of Mari Selvaraj's filmography thus far - those that haven't seen them, I heartily commend Baradwaj Rangan's reviews of Pariyerum Perumal (2018) and Karnan (2021). Pariyerum... told the non-fluffy story of a  romance that transgressed caste norms and the fallout that occurred in its wake. Karnan, in which Dhanush plays the Angry Young Man from an outcast community, can plot-wise be regarded as a "Hero stands up for the oppressed masses" potboiler, but the script and direction gave it a distinctive identity - for me it was one of the best films of 2021. With his latest, Maamannan, Mari leans towards the commercial angle in his telling. This has the consequence of making the narrative more mundane than his previous ventures, but it is still quite acceptable as a mainstream movie told from the POV of the oppressed class.

As the title character, Tamil cinema's favorite 90's crass comedian Vadivelu gets a rare serious role, and he plays with obvious relish. His Maamannan is the respected leader - an MLA - from the scheduled-caste community, courted by the state ruling party for his ability to garner public support. Maamannan is admired all around him...that is, all except his son Athiveeran (Udhayanidhi Stalin). A la Ramesh Sippy's Shakti, there is between father and son a coldness, a wall of silence, whose reasons are couched in an incident from the past. There is also a marked difference in their attitudes. While Mamannan works for the upliftment of his people, there is still a core of servility in him: he accepts his rise in the political world as a gift given him by his upper-caste masters and at political meetings stands with folded arms, ready to receive instruction. Athiveeran, who runs a martial arts school, is more militant, preferring to demand and, when required, snatch by force his rights from the privileged. As a proud symbol of his caste origins, he rears pigs, and has a pig tattoo on his hand. He even paints pictures of pigs with wings, a symbol of the liberation he hopes for his community.

The third major player is Rathnavel (Fahadh Faasil), the rowdy upper-caste politico who treats Mamannan like a family serf. Rathnavel's character screams 'Bad Man' - when his prized hound fails in the local dog race, he beats the poor pooch to death. His cruel and domineering attitude eventually brings him in conflict with Athiveeran and later Mamannan. Pushed against the wall, it is up to Mamannan, whether to crumble and bow down to his masters' wishes or grow a spine and stand up against them regardless of cost.

Mamannan is a masala film, but within that space it tries to stand out. While there are fight scenes where Athiveeran shows his ability to beat up dozens of goons, the film does not devolve into a brainless machismo action fest. Female lead Keerthi Suresh is not the usual birdbrained damsel in distress - she has both the courage and the wits to be an equal companion to Athiveeran's fight for equality. 

There are a few caveats, of course. Apart from Stalin being some 20 years older than the role he plays, the utter lack of nuance in Faasil's villain is a letdown. The screenplay could have done with some serious tightening - the lengthy stretch where Maamannan fights a guerrilla poll war against Rathnavel is mostly uninvolving. This notwithstanding, I found Maamannan more palatable than 2021's hyped Jai Bhim which reduced the lower castes to faceless victims dependent on being rescued by benevolent upper-caste heroes. Like Karnan, this movie at least exhorts the oppressed to stand up for themselves instead of looking for external saviors, and that's a sentiment I approve of.

The Black Marble [dir. Harold Becker]

Harold Becker's The Black Marble - adapted by author and former LAPD detective Joseph Wambaugh from his own novel - is an odd movie experience in terms of tonal consistency. Sometimes it wants to be a screwball comedy, and at other times it steps into significantly bleaker territory. That said, the film has charms that keep you engaged even through its issues.

Robert Foxworth is AA Valnikov, a Hollywood precinct cop with Russian roots. At the beginning of the film, he staggers drunk into a church service and ends up snapping his cuffs on his own crotch. His previous partner is dead and he has recurring nightmares of a skinned rabbit; clearly, Valnikov is a man with problems.

This being 1980, the police department doesn't believe in recommending him for psychiatric counseling (hey, a burnt out cop with a service firearm - what could go wrong?). Instead they think it'd be a great idea to saddle Valnikov with a new partner, hard-nosed career policewoman Natalie Zimmerman (Paula Prentiss, channeling Margot Kidder's Lois Lane brassiness). Zimmerman's objections are pooh-poohed away with disturbing insensitivity, and even the script treats her as a bit of a joke. Apparently, all Mr. Valniknov needs to get over what's eating him inside is to pow-wow with the new colleague and introduce her to his borscht-serving family, until they inevitably fall in love, courtesy an extended nightcap session. It's a problematic concept for me, although Foxworth's performance and his chemistry with Prentiss are persuasive. He has a nuanced take on Valnikov - even in his frequently drunk state V is always polite, not the renegade asshole Dirty Harry stereotype.

Then we have everyone's favorite character actor Harry Dean Stanton as Skinner (a reference to the rabbit in V's nightmare?). Skinner is a pet store / shelter veterinarian who schemes to kidnap a rich girl's miniature Schnauzer for ransom to pay his massive gambling debts. Only, it turns out his victim Madeline (Barbara Babcock) may not be so rich as he imagines - she just happens to live in a large Hollywood home, and struggles to pay her bills. There's an engaging banter between the two, as Skinner tries to assert a tough guy demeanor he cannot truly embody, and she pleads her financial woes to him. It's funny till the dog loses an ear, and then I couldn't laugh at it anymore (even though the injury is only implied, and we later see the animal unharmed, apart from a bandage covering the ear).

In a meeting where the intimacy certainly crosses the line for a professional interview, softhearted Valnikov vows to find Madeline's dog. Zimmerman's jealousy is aroused by his show of concern, even if she has a steady boyfriend, as she frequently reminds V...and herself. She gives vent to it by rolling her eyes and emitting disparaging remarks to the victim about the fuss raised for a dog. You can tell that sensitivity training wasn't big for the Hollywood PD, at least in 1980.

But if there are significant tonal discrepancies, the film also has some endearing quirks. Stanton's Skinner is a layered character - he's not an evil man, he's just desperate. The climax where Valnikov goes after Skinner is probably one of the more unique action movie showdowns, taking place in the pet shelter. Skinner's comeuppance in a way mirrors Valnikov's  handcuff accident at the start.

A young James Woods has a two-scene appearance as a street musician.

 

A few words on the blu-ray from Kino Lorber:

The transfer comes off a recent 4K restoration and the bulk of it looks very strong, with robust colors and fine grain resolution. Some shots are softer, but it may be a product of the original shoot. The dialog and Maurice Jarre's romantic score have decent presence in the DTS-HDMA 2.0 track, but I still had to use the optional subs to get some of the slang and Foxworth's mumbled dialog. The not quite plentiful extras consist mainly of a director's commentary and the feature trailer.

The Pope's Exorcist [dir. Julius Avery]

After I saw the trailer for The Pope's Exorcist (TPE), I was expecting a campy knockoff of William Friedkin's influential possession shocker The Exorcist - In short, I wasn't in for the scares, I was in for the laughs. This turned out true in most aspects. Star Russel Crowe complements his stocky frame with a heavy Italian accent to play the titular clergyman Gabriele Amorth. The character is based on an actual person, himself a colorful character with such charming opinions as, “Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter”. Amorth was chief exorcist of the Diocese of Rome, whose Bishop is the Pope himself. As per his own statements, Amorth performed tens of thousands of exorcisms, a claim that has been disputed. I'm thinking it might have been more interesting to see a biopic of the man himself (Friedkin, no less, covered an exorcism by Amorth in 2017, in a documentary called The Devil and Father Amorth, which received very tepid reviews). But TPE takes the same route as The Conjuring series did with Ed and Lorraine Warren, assuming Amorth's claims to be (ha!) gospel truth.

In a hilarious prologue, Amorth draws a demon inside a pig, whose head is then blown off with a shotgun. He is presented as a kind of papal James Bond, traveling across countries on missions (pun unintended): Of course, instead of an Ashton Matin our padre rides a swishy Lambretta and his choice of poison is a doppio espresso, stirred not shaken. Amorth is called in by M...erm, the Pope (Franco 'Django' Nero) to deal with a dangerous new case. This time it's an American family in which the widowed mother (Alex Essoe) with her kids travels to her husband's sole legacy, which is - you can't top this for absurdity - a disused Abbey in Spain.

The kids (Laurel Marsden and Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) are sulky smart-asses to start with, but things get worse when the young son starts to looks funny, talk in other voices and (naughty, naughty) cops a feel of mommy's boobs. Perfunctory visits to neurologists and counselors serve no purpose (they never do in these films). The local priest (Daniel Zovatto), after he is sent crashing out the boy's door, manages to hotline Rome, and Amorth rides in.

The rest of the film is a back and forth between Amorth and the demon (with Zovatto's priest taking the Jason Miller part from The Exorcist). It mixes the standard exorcism circus show with preposterous allusions to how the Spanish Inquisition (which in reality led to the death of thousands of people, and torture/incarceration of scores more) was basically the brainchild of a possessed priest, giving the church a clean chit. Still, the real Amorth professed that Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were the product of demonic possession, so this might be "true to source".

While not as much of a LOL-fest as I had hoped, TPE has sufficient hilariously absurd material to be a decent time-pass watch for a weekend movie night. Crowe seems aware of the camp quotient and his performance reflects the tongue-in-cheek. I did wish Franco Nero had also got in some of the action. Maybe Pope Django could have come in at the climax with a demon-slaying gatling gun quipping at the demon "Go back to Hell!"

Arnold [dir. Lesley Chilcott]

You don't actually need the 3-episode Netflix documentary mini-series to understand the psyche of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This less-than-5min interview clip taken from the time he was filming Conan the Barbarian (1982) will suffice:

Remember here, this is before Conan had been released and made his name as a major league Hollywood star that could crush box-office records across the world. Arnold's primary reputation then was as a star bodybuilder, who had worked in a few small movies, and none as the leading man. But he is unironically comparing himself to Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford. With regards to his pathway towards stardom, he rates himself an "8 out of 10, with only 2 more points to cover".

Anyone that saw this footage at the time would have laughed his butt off at the man's audacity. Arnold's hulking frame, unmistakably Teutonic face and thick Austrian accent were considered liabilities in the Hollywood of that period. The only opportunities for bodybuilders to get leading roles had been in low-budget Italian "sword and sandal" movies (his idol Reg Park had done a string of Hercules movies in Rome in the early 60's before returning to the bodybuilding business).

But Arnold, from an early time in life, had a staggering level of belief in himself - what in some other man would have been vainglorious boasting, he set out to make truth. This is echoed in the documentary when he says [paraphrasing], "If I can visualize something clearly, then I know 100% that I can get there." In its 3 defined chapters - Athlete, Actor and American - Arnold sets out to demonstrate its subject's determination to "get there" in each of his chosen endeavors. It goes without saying that the treatment is glossy with more than a little dash of hagiography. It would have been essential of course, to obtain the kind of access they get to Arnold, the superstar for whom "Too big is not big enough".

So we get the familiar story of how young Schwarzenegger took up bodybuilding as a means of making his mark and getting away from the hard life in Austria with the aim of making it big in the USA. Once he had conquered the bodybuilding world (he held the Mr. Olympia trophy undefeated from 1970-75), he shifted gears to movies. Along with main box-office rival Sylvester Stallone, Arnold went on to personify the hyper-masculine gun and muscle toting 80's action hero, an icon that transcended language and culture. Over the next 2 decades, his films dominated global mainstream cinema and he became one of the highest paid actors in the world. In 2003, Arnold jumped into active politics and served as Governor of California for 2 terms.

Many of the details in Arnold are supposedly from his autobiography Total Recall. For people like me that haven't read it, there are some new details of Schwarzenegger's life: His upbringing in post-WW2 Austria where, in his words, a lot of men suffered from depression and PTSD, and this reflected on their families. Gustav Schwarzenegger had been a member of the military police in the Nazi-occupied country before being discharged in 1944 on account of medical illness. Subsequently he married and raised 2 children, Meinhard and Arnold. Arnold talks about a disciplinarian upbringing interspersed with drunk beatings from his father. Meinhard died in his 20's in a DUI accident in 1971, a year before their father passed away from a stroke. At the time Arnold was busy with his bodybuilding career in the US; he did not go for either of their funerals, attributing it to being so focused on his goals that he suppressed all emotion in the process. He also talks about how the difficult childhood toughened him up (quoting Nietzsche's famous "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger") while his brother, who he says had a more "fragile" persona, cracked under the strain. Again, there is almost no emotion when he says this, no sense of a bond between them, and no sorrow or guilt over the brother's fate.

While I am aware of his film career trajectory, it was a revelation to know that he was a millionaire well before embarking on his movie career, having invested his earnings from bodybuilding into real estate and other business. Thus, he had the luxury of working on carefully chosen projects, never for rent money. The same shrewdness and self-possession that had served him as an athlete now guided his path towards the top of Hollywood. Having been lucky enough to work with creative powerhouses like John Milius (Conan) and James Cameron (The Terminator) in his early days, Schwarzenegger quickly translated his box-office currency into clout over the projects he worked on. He wanted to expand his range and appeal, and deliberately courted directors like Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall) and Ivan Reitman (Twins, Junior) who designed projects around him.

His political career is the least interesting aspect of Arnold's life for me, since it had no direct impact on my life. But it was also around this time that the cracks in his personal life appeared. He was accused by several women of having groped and/or misbehaved with them in the past (his sleazy on-camera behavior as a celebrity ambassador in this early Brazil tourism video makes it easy to believe those accusations). He expresses regret over the incidents in an empirical, grudging manner, more in the vein of a man who acknowledges their inconvenience to his reputation than a genuine reappraisal of his attitude.

More damagingly, his wife Maria Shriver divorced him over an affair he'd carried on with their housekeeper, fathering an illegitimate child in the process. In these issues, we are only privy to Schwarzenegger's perspective. We do not learn what Shriver or their children feel about his behavior. Most telling is that we see Arnold living alone in a sprawling house, with farm animals for company. While telling his story, he fondly pores over his own pictures over the course of his career(s). But the depiction of his interactions with family is restricted to still images taken years ago.

But Arnold is no depressed loner asking for your sympathy. Even at 70+, the alpha male in him loves oversized vehicle toys and machismo camaraderie. He believes in "work and fun", and exhorts people to channel their time to "being useful" instead of brooding over "What am I feeling today?" Advocates of empathy for mental health syndromes might balk at this mocking dismissal of depression, but for better or worse, this is just a reflection of the man's supreme self-focus and conquering attitude. It is the formula he has made to work for him.

Children of Men [dir. Alfonso Cuaron]

I realize I'm rather late to the appreciation party for Children of Men (CoM), the Alfonso Cuaron film that was released and generated a fair buzz in 2006. There were two reasons for this: I'd read and loved PD James' source novel. When I read that the shy middle-aged academic protagonist of the story had been transformed into some kind of action hero played by Clive Owen, I was dismayed. Secondly, Clive Owen himself. I'd only seen the man in Shoot 'Em Up, a film I didn't care for at all, in which his constantly sullen presence irritated me greatly. Even though I had bagged the Arrow Video blu-ray of CoM in 2021 during one of their site sales, it took me all this while to actually sit down to watch it.

Once willing to see the film as one that takes the bones of PDJ's story but does its own thing, I found CoM quite engaging. Clive Owen is Theo Faron, a depressed alcoholic British bureaucrat in a world with a bleak future. Human females have become sterile, so there are no new children. The last born human beings are treated like royalty and it is a national tragedy when one of them is killed by an angry fan for refusing an autograph. The Britain shown here is a totalitarian regime, a cross between George Orwell's 1984 and Pink Floyd's Animals (referenced with a floating pig balloon straight from the album cover). But it is apparently still better off than other countries in the world, and therefore constantly besieged by refugees of all races, who are rounded up and sent off to camps. The memory of James' novel is very hazy now, but I think the focus on the plight of refugees is of a significantly greater concern in the film (likely an offshoot of Cuaron himself being an immigrant to the US?).

When we first meet Theo, he steps out of a coffee shop where people are glued to TV reports of the murder of a celebrity youth, only for a bomb to go off inside moments later. This act is attributed to a militant group called the Fishes. They are led by Theo's former wife Julian (Julianne Moore), who contacts Theo to arrange transit papers for a woman. Theo later discovers that the woman is a pregnant refugee Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), who Julian wants to escort to The Human Project, a secret organization working to reverse the infertility phenomenon.

Early on in this mission, Julian is killed in an attack, an audacious scene brilliantly orchestrated by Cuaron and DoP Emmanuel Lubezki. Theo helps to take Kee to the Fishes' hideout in the country, but there he realizes that instead of ferrying her to The Human Project, they plan to hold Kee hostage and use her baby as a prize to negotiate with the government. He gathers Kee and escapes, with the Fishes in hot pursuit. Theo must now protect Kee from both the militants and government forces, and escort her to her destination.

CoM is an action film, but like few others you have seen. After the initial setup in London, a good part of the film is set in the bleak, muddy English countryside, and later in a refugee camp set amidst disused partially broken down buildings. The visuals have a drained out quality to them, similar to Michael Radford's celebrated adaptation of 1984. The script is not afraid to have quiet, off-beat moments, like when Theo hangs out with his pot-smoking hippie friend Jasper (Michael Caine), a former political cartoonist with a catatonic wife. Theo is not your typical action hero, either. After the coffee shop bombing at the film's start he is thoroughly shaken. Later in the several skirmishes, he's no suave and fearless brawler, but a vulnerable man, whose best weapon is his determination to do what he thinks is right. While Julianne Moore's part is a short one, she makes a major impact and you can imagine how the spirit of Julian guides Theo in his actions further on. Michael Caine relishes the rare opportunity to do a laid-back, irreverent character (Apparently John Lennon was the inspiration for his approach).

The contribution of DoP Lubezki cannot be appreciated enough. Several of the film's key sequences are shot as long, seemingly unbroken takes, with the camera taking on the role of a mobile observer, following our characters as they make their way through intense conflict zones. The production design team's creation of a near-future dystopian Britain is also immersive.

It is remarkable that Cuaron and his team convinced Universal Studios to pump $76 million into a British dystopian adventure with a not necessarily happy ending, and no major Hollywood stars apart from Moore, who is offed very early in the film. Sadly, they were not rewarded in terms of box-office success. Still, it is a film that continues to be relevant and deserves to be revisited multiple times.

A few words on Arrow Video's blu-ray, originally released in 2018:

Arrow's transfer, based on an HD master supplied by Universal Studios, gives a strong presentation of the film, which should at least equal Universal's own disc from 2009. The deliberate decision to have a gritty documentary feel with drained out color has a major impact on how the film looks, but there appear to be no encode related anomalies, and grain pattern is tight. The 5.1 lossless DTS-HDMA sound is not as bombastic as some other tentpole films, but several action sequences, like the assault on the car and the escape run through the refugee camp under attack deliver sufficient bass oomph and surround action. Extras on the disc include an audio commentary, meaty video appreciations by noted film writers Philip Kemp and Kat Ellinger, and likely all the extras from the Universal blu (which include a half hour analysis of the film and several featurettes with the cast and crew). My 2021 copy of this 2018 didn't have the first pressing booklet (expected). The reversible cover has original poster art on the other side.

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.