Thudarum, Mohanlal Finally Redeems  Himself

Thudarum,  Mohanlal Finally Redeems  Himself

Rating: ****

After a string of duds, Mohanlal  is back in shape in a  role that requires him  to assume many shapes.  And boy,  is he up to the  task!

 To begin with , he is  a cabbie unhealthily attached to his  vintage  Ambassador  car.He is  also  a  bullish husband, a doting father and  a Drishyam avatar. Beyond all these  roles, Shamugham , a.k.a Benz(as  he thinks his rickety  car is posh, hah!) is  a man  pushed beyond endurance  by a   satanic  cop named  George (he likes  to refer  himself  as ‘George  Sir’ and that’s  just the tip of his  sneering satanism)played  with  alarming odiousness by  Prakash Varma.

   I haven’t  seen a more  lucid portrayal of  cinematic evil in quite  a while.Admirably,  Mohanlal allows Varma’s  psycho-cop and the Ambassador carto dominate  the  show. Here, for a change, he is not  interested in  being in every frame. And even if he is ubiquitous  he isn’t  messianic  in  his  zeal  to score heroic  points.

I only wish director Tharun Moorthy and  his  team  of writers  had avoided the excessive  violence  towards the end which includes  two female characters being brutally and repeatedly  thrashed by  the villain-cop.Let’s just the police torture here is  Drishyam on speed.

We do get  the point of George’s  evil designs , why stomp it in?

Also the cardinal point of honour killing seems more an add-on, an after-thought  rather than an integral part  of the theme.

 That  said, the prudently structured  narrative  with  nary  slack  any moment  to  digress , keeps the audience  invested  right to the  bloodied  brutal  finale. Though  it is not difficult to  pre-empt some  of the plot’s clever moves,  I  stopped secondguessing  after a while. Thudaram sweeps you into its  frenetic world of rapid ire.

Some  of the writing  here is  so devious,you  suspect  the writers are trying to be  over-clever. But then the  thoughtful celerity  plus the modalities  of the crime beat  woven into  the  narration, hit you hard: this is  no ordinary crime saga. The  happenings  flow out in a karmic cascade sweeping  the audience into  a nightmare they would rather  not  be in.

 Mohanlal ensures we remain invested in the  agonizing  world of crime and  scarce redemption. It  has been a while since he played an  underdog, a stunt man  from the movies  coerced  into taking on family responsibilities  that weigh  heavily on his conscience till the very end. Mohanlal desperation to get even with the villains will get  to   you  in ways that  most Hindi cinema has long  forgotten.

   Thudaram would  probably  put you off the  Khaki uniform  for a while.  But there is an uncorrupted spirit at  the core of this this  cleverly constructed crime  drama  which carries  you across the boundaries  of  conventional  entertainment.