Neru – My Flash Review!

Often, it happens that the reputation of the Director clouds our expectations first and then our take on the film. I suspect that the recent Mohanlal’s Malayalam film – Neru is a victim of such inclinations. The film is, after all, directed by Jeetu Joseph, who gave us the iconic hit films in the Drishyam franchise and a few more memorable films in the genre of investigation thrillers.

Unlike his earlier police procedurals, Neru is a legal and a courtroom procedural. A young girl, that too a blind one at that, is raped by a man. The police are able to boil down on the rapist quickly as the victim is able to identify him, though she couldn’t have seen him. What follows is a long and interesting trial in the court where the prosecution tries to prove its charge against a strong defence, which keeps pointing to the lack of eyewitnesses or any material evidence of the whole crime.

The majority of the film is about what happens during the court trial. Therefore, it is important that the proceedings are engaging without being overwhelming. The Director, who is known to have a lot of knowledge of police and legal procedurals, brings all his domain expertise to the fore in the writing. For all of us who have been only exposed repeatedly to “Objection sustained”, “Objection overruled”, and “No Questions” kind of lingo in courtroom dramas thus far, we are introduced to a whole new set of courtroom jargons like “Plea of Alibi”, “marking of evidence, PW1, PW2 and so on.

Though overwhelming at times, the flow of the screenplay and the performances by the main cast keep us hooked. The script takes us through interesting twists and turns, which have been conceived well.  However, the nailing of the case by the prosecution lawyer, Mohanlal, was almost on the expected lines. I was hoping for some new twist at the end, which didn’t come.

As the prosecution lawyer brought to the fore from the wilderness to fight this case (as it happens with investigating police officers in most films), Mohanlal gives a realistic and measured performance. He manifests his client’s pain while appearing for her in court through his measured dialogue delivery and body language. Siddique plays it up as the defence lawyer, but it is par for the course. Much was expected from Priyamani’s role and character, including some backstory of her relationship with Mohanlal, but it looks like it got edited out in the final cut.  Anaswara Rajan’s portrayal of the blind girl with a strong mind was apt.

In terms of making, the Director opts for a straightforward approach, more like what we saw in his earlier films, that gives a sense of realism. The only novel thing I noticed was the repeated use of “J-cut ” and “L-cut” split editing in the movie, whereby the audio of one scene overlaps with the following or preceding scene, respectively. I found the technique helped in leaving lingering effects while shifting scenes.

The matter-of-fact approach of the parents in the initial parts of the film after the rape incident seemed odd, but then it could just to create doubts in our minds about who the culprit was, I guess. The dialogues get very verbose and technical at times. The wink and nod signals of the defence lawyer Priyamani to the witnesses during the “cross” looked very amateurish in an otherwise well-staged screenplay.

Neru, as a courtroom drama, is a good film, but as a film by “Jeetu Joseph”, it’s just about good!  For Mohanlal, it is a good comeback after a few average outings.

Neru now streaming on Disney+Hotstar.