Anweshippin Kandethum – My Flash Review!

One more Malayalam film. One more murder mystery. One more police procedural. One more no-star, no-frills film. One more slow burn. One more Good Watch. Just that we get to see two investigations in one.

A zoom-in shot of Tovino Thomas (like that of Mohanlal in Drishyam) who plays Anand Narayanan, a Sub Inspector in a police station in Kottayam, takes us to a flashback where he is involved in a murder investigation of a young girl. The culprit is finally nabbed after an intense investigation by Anand and his team but gets censured for not closing the loop fully in a so-near yet so-far close. The flashback ends and segues into the present where Anand and the team get an opportunity to redeem themselves fully by cracking what is touted as a 6-year-old hopeless murder case. How the team goes about this and if they redeem themselves form the second half of the film.

While scanning the crime scene, Tovino’s character sees a card with the verse Mathew 7.7 from the Bible – “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you”. He gets fixated in particular with “Seek, and you will find” which is what the title of this film means in Malayalam and this becomes his motto while investigating both the cases.

In terms of narrative, the 1^st case moves briskly and at an even pace while the 2^nd case is a real slow burn with every step of the investigation meeting obstacles of different types. Yet, the proceedings are kept engaging throughout and the end comes as an interesting twist in both the cases.

This is Darwin Kuriakose’s debut film as a director, yet he shows no signs of any tentativeness in the making or the craft. Supported well by his cameraman Gautham Shankar, Kuriakose brings the 90s Kottayam before us quite accurately that too without explicitly saying that the film is set in the pre-internet, pre-mobile era.

Writing by Jinu Abraham is sharp. In one scene involving a DySP and his subordinate in the first half, we are shown what all are wrong with the police in a country like India.  In all the police procedural films in Malayalam I have seen, one thing comes out very clearly. Malayalam filmmakers and writers show a deep understanding of how the police function in real. Devoid of the over-the-top sequences we get to see in Hindi and Tamil cop films, the depiction is very rooted.

Kerala is also God’s Own Protest Country! The film depicts this aspect nicely as we get to see protests for all and sundry causes.

Even Tovino Thomas is shown as a nervous and tentative cop even while as an individual he is confident of his abilities. He shows a sense of vulnerability on the screen the reason for which is not clear to us. There is no light thrown on Tovino, the individual and his personal life whatsoever. Therefore, the emotional play and the connect are missing with his character in his success or his loss. The supporting cast does a competent job and some of the characters like the Panchayat President in the 2^nd case are imaginatively conceived. Santhosh Narayanan’s background score is non-intrusive and less dramatic for a crime thriller but it works.

Anweshippin Kandethum is a competently made cop film and is a good watch. It is now streaming on Netflix.