Sunday, January 22, 2006

Ivar

After yesterday's Stop Violence, today I watched another Sathya-inspired Malayalam film on Surya TV - TK Rajeev Kumar's Ivar (2003). This film is also the story of two goonda gangs in Kochi. Pambu Jose (Biju Menon) leads one gang, and in the beginning of the film we see Raghav Menon (Jayaram), an IPS officer, joining the gang of Pambu Jose as part of some secret "anti-goonda" mission. Raghav earns Jose's trust and soon becomes the right-hand of the gang leader. Raghav soon realizes that he has not only the goondas to fight with, but there are also other police officers, political leaders and ministers who are all supporters of Pambu Jose. How Raghav succeeds in his mission is the story.

This heavily clichéd film is photographed using a hand-held camera most of the time. This gives us an impression of walking along with the characters in many scenes; But at some places, the abrupt camera movements are irritating. Story is nothing new and it goes in expected lines. The dialogues are all bookish, and they don’t help much in character development. Biju Menon has given a convincing performance as the gang leader, and Jayaram has tried his best to look like an action hero. Anil Murali, playing the role of Hakkim, another goonda in Jose's gang, has acted well. I have seen him in several movies, playing the roles of villains, and I feel he has good capabilities to act and deserves better roles. Rest of the characters in Ivar are not very lengthy or worth mentioning. Overall, I think Ivar is a film watchable for once.

This weekend was mostly spent in front of television. Today morning also I watched a Malayalam film, Simhavalan Menon (1995) directed by Viji Thampi, which was inspired from the Hindi film Gol Maal (1979). Madhu and Jagadeesh play the roles Utpal Dutt and Amol Palekar had played in Gol Maal. Simhavalan Menon was nowhere near the Hindi original, but there is a funny scene of a birthday celebration in this film which I enjoyed. Madhu's character wants all people to talk 100% in Malayalam. Jagathi sings "Happy Birthday" and Madhu glares at him, asking him not to use "aangaleyam". So, Jagathi sings in Malayalam: "santhosha.. janmadinam.. kuttikku...". The way Jagathi acted in this scene was funny, and I really liked this scene.

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