Thudarum – My Flash Review!

The poster and the trailer gave the vibes of another Drishyam-type film from Mohanlal. Indeed, the first half an hour or so proceeds like that. The hill town setting, family banter, teenage kids, and slice-of-life happenings all conform to the Drishyam template until that moment arrives. However, it then takes a different turn, and I wouldn’t say for the better.

Mohanlal plays the role of Benz, as everyone, including his wife and children, addresses him fondly. His real name is Shanmugham, and he worked as a stuntman in films in Madras before being forced to leave the city and move to Kerala due to unfortunate circumstances. In his company is a vintage Ambassador Mark I car, with which Benz is obsessed. The vehicle becomes a character that triggers the turning point in the film after the initial serene moments.

Like in all hero-centric films that feature a “Saadhu” character living quietly, there is what I call the “Baasha moment”. In Thudarum, that moment arrives after which the movie is turned on its head. The slow, pleasant, and quiet moments come to an end as the villain and his team enter. At the beginning of the film, we see a caption that states, “When Elephants walk, the forest walks with them.” Mohanlal’s title card appears with a single tusker in the background. After the hero transformation scene, it becomes evident that Mohanlal’s character is the Elephant being referenced repeatedly.

From this point onwards, the movie descends into a typical revenge drama, filled with gruesome and violent action scenes. To a large extent, the film caters to the mass hero image of Mohanlal, with scenes enhanced to fit this portrayal.

As the family man Benz in the first half and the mass hero in the second half, Mohanlal anchors his role perfectly. However, there is nothing we haven’t seen before. The reunion of Shobana as Mohanlal’s pair brings us back to those 80s and 90s films, but here, the scope and screen time to reprise that chemistry are limited. It’s good to see Maniampilla Raju back on screen in an entirely unrecognisable form after a long while.

Prakash Varma in a negative role as the cop makes an impressive debut. According to the screenplay, he needed to deliver a nuanced performance that doesn’t reveal his negative character at the outset. In my opinion, he was able to sustain that only for the initial few minutes; after which, he quickly falls into an overacting mode, frequently mixing his lines with villainous sniggers. I thought we had moved past that era.

Jakes Bejoy, who is usually brilliant with his background scores in Thudarum, falls into the “mass” trap and tries to do an Anirudh. The BGM is excessively loud, and some of the grooves he used detract from the emotional impact of the scene. The songs are pleasing to the ears.

Mohanlal’s Thudarum comes after his mass elevated film Empuraan. While Empuraan was an obvious mass offering, made evident from the outset, Thudarum takes it a step further without showing any hint of it. In that sense, it is likely Mohanlal’s way of indicating that the Empuraan-style mass films from his side will “thudarum…” meaning “To be continued…” Therefore, it’s disappointing, particularly given that it was directed by Tharun Moorthy, whose earlier two films were well-made and not run-of-the-mill. I approached Thudarum with high expectations, but it turned out to be a bit overrated; it’s an okay watch.  Thudarum is now streaming on Hotstar.

Postscript: In an earlier scene, Mohanlal catches his teenage son smoking on the sly. When caught, the son throws the cigarette butt and runs away. Mohanlal picks it up and smokes it himself, then says, “Thank God, it is not ‘That’,” meaning he is glad that his son was smoking a cigarette and not some weed. This is the third Malayalam film I have watched in recent times that references drugs, confirming what I read and hear – that drugs in Kerala are a real problem among the youth. After all, cinema follows life.