I don’t recall any film in the history of Indian cinema spawning its own genre. That distinction, in my opinion, belongs to Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam film Drishyam. Released in 2013, it became not only a Malayalam cult classic but also a film remade in multiple languages, expanded into at least three sequels, and, most significantly, a new genre. A genre centered on crime, with a detail-oriented police procedural around it, and, finally, where the audience roots not for the police, who conduct the investigation, but for those involved in the crime. This is mainly because the people who apparently committed the crime were ordinary people like us, not criminals or antisocial elements, and the crime happened because of circumstances, not by design. Drishyam’s box-office success and critical acclaim somewhat quelled questions about morality, and since then we’ve seen many films with the same theme, eliciting mixed responses from viewers. Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar (PDK) is the latest addition to the Drishyam genre, which stretches the same template further with reasonable elan.
Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar, meaning “Prima Facie Guilty” in Malayalam, is a story about two entry-level female and two male cops at a local town police station in Kerala who get embroiled in a murder through a series of circumstances on an unfortunate night while out on patrol duty. Each of the four cops battles personal strife at home, each in a different way, that makes their work as cops important to them. The group’s leader, not by age but by intellect, is Ameena, played by Parvathy Thiruvothu, who gets a job in the police force on compassionate grounds after her husband is martyred as a police officer during an operation. When she is offered a desk job, she opts for a policing job and, after completing the required training, joins the station. The Director and the writers get through all this context quickly and get to the point early, when the cops get into inadvertent trouble.
The band of 4 has two choices – confess what they did and face the long arm of the law, or brazen it out Drishyam-style. Given their backgrounds and family situations, they face a Hobson’s choice, which is to go with the latter. But on that journey, they have to contend with an investigating officer who is super-intelligent and has a cult following even within the force. He has cracked the toughest of cases with his intellect and has documented them in his books. He is SP in the Crime Branch, Harris Meeran, played brilliantly by Vijayaraghavan, who claims in his book that no crime is perfect and that what is needed is a perfect investigation. The film shifts into a pacy mode the moment Vijayaraghavan makes an entry, in the typical mass-hero style, in slow motion with heavy background music.
We know how the story will pan out. We also know who to root for here. The question is whether the screenplay is engaging and taut enough, and whether it avoids too many logical fallacies, especially when obvious comparisons to Drishyam are inevitable. On these counts, I must say that PDK comes out in flying colours with a pretty engaging screenplay. I am not saying that the script is flawless. It has its problems, but not so pronounced as to derail the proceedings. The issues in the writing are more to do with conveniences and coincidences that come to the rescue of the protagonists now and then. But because the writing gets into a lot of detail about police procedures and gets them almost close to reality, the misgivings in the script don’t come in the way of keeping us hooked. So, the writing duo of Vijay Thottungal and Subramaniam deserve the first set of kudos, because the film’s strength largely lies in its script. It is really interesting to see how Malayalam writers have excelled in the genre of police procedurals, with PDK joining the august list of some wonderful Malayalam films in this space lately.
The cast’s performances are perfectly pitched. Vijayaraghavan, who is having a career-best run with some author-backed roles these days, also aces the role of the investigating officer in this film. His character goes through an interesting arc in the film. He goes from an officer revered and celebrated for his brilliance in the community to one whose ego gets ahead of him by the end, and he showcases this transition with his nuanced acting. Parvathy, as usual, gets the measure of the role right and plays it with restraint. In a film bereft of any “Star”, Parvathy is the Star and she shines well.
In terms of craft, Director Shahad Nilambur shows extraordinary maturity in his third film. The framing and visuals by DOP Roby Varghese were outstanding. There is a lot of detail in the art direction and set design. The background score could have been less dramatic. In the initial portions of the film, it was excessive. There are many similarities in plot points to Drishyam, and this familiarity looms large in how the screenplay plays out.
All in all, Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar is a well-made crime thriller film where the face-off is between cops themselves. I would rate it as a “Must Watch” if you are a fan of crime thrillers and police procedurals. And as a bonus, there is no scene of the “prima facie guilty” cops getting together in the evening, drinking and abusing their seniors. It is streaming now on Netflix.
My Flash Review: A Must-Watch.
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