Run Baby Run Is Breathless With Excitement

Run Baby Run(Disney+Hotstar)

Rating: **

Don’t get  him wrong.Sathya  means well. He is the damsel-in-distress type. A godfearing banker engaged  to marry a nice wholesome  ‘modern’ girl(the kind who says, ‘Cool’ when when she  wants to  sound cool), Sathya one  day has an unwanted  guest. A  woman on the run(Aishwarya Rajesh , wasted)  seeks his  help. He lets her into his  house. Only to find her dead  in the bathroom  the  next morning.

What  next? I wondered as I  sat up  on my chair alert to the writer’s  blog.

This is where we question the concept of  the guest  as God. What  if ‘God’ causes  you  unforeseen trouble?

From this beginning(also, one suicide and one  near-suicide) Run Baby Run  constructs and  bombs  its own  bizarre  sequence of  events which  seem to  focus on only one  emotion: anxiety.

Writer-director  Jiyen  Krishnakumar piles on the the twists  and  turns  in the plot with the sole purpose  of  staying ahead  of the audience, logistics  be damned. It’s like that  news editor in Irving Wallace’s novel The Almighty manufacturing and staging “news” to stay ahead  of  the competition.

There is a  shrill desperation in the storytelling as to how to hold our attention. Some  of  the plot twists  are woefully unconvincing. From the  moment Sathya stuffs the deceased woman’s body in  suitcase his adventures in  blunderland begin to look highly suspicious. It is  unacceptable  to see a  man who had nothing to with the murder committing suicide after he  finds the  suitcase with the  body.

Events  move at a rapid fire pace  to cover for the lack of coherence ,even logic.There is no death of action in the plot. We are  supposed to be helplessly windswept  into the goings-on. The  entire impact  of  the  sledgehammer suspense rests  on leading  man R J Balaji who  gives an all-new definition to the  concept of deadpan.

In some  ways, Balaji’s imperturbable  face is  an asset: when  you have so much happening in the plot, the actor  will either  ham or  restrain himself.Balaji chooses the latter option. Actors like  Radhika  Sarathkumar(in a wheelchair for no reason except to make the hero’s mother look tear-ful) are   wasted as  Balaji  occupies nearly every frame.

By the  time we know the killer’s identity,it is too late  to get involved with the  act of justice.Too much injustice has  already been done,not only to the protagonist but to the viewers who are force-fed this frenzied catch-a-killer race designed like  a video game running on borrowed time.