Saturday, January 21, 2006

Stop Violence

Watched the Malayalam film Stop Violence (2002) today on Kiran TV. This film is the directorial debut of scriptwriter AK Sajan. In this film, there is a scene in which a group of goondas in Kochi sitting in a room and watching Ram Gopal Varma’s landmark Hindi gangster film Satya on television. I don’t know whether the director wanted to remind us of Satya for some thanksgiving purpose. Anyways, Stop Violence follows the form and tone of a Ram Gopal Varma film, like Satya, Company or D, and probably it would be the first Malayalam film in this genre.

The film shows the story of the "crime life" at Kochi. The main characters of the film are Goonda Stephen (Vijayaraghavan), a police officer who also operates as a goonda leader (!), and Sathan (Prithviraj), one of Stephen's most trusted assistants. When Sathan is appointed to protect a family from the attacks of the opposite goonda gang, he meets Angel (Chandra Lakshman), and that comes as a "turning point" (as clichéd as it could be) in his life.

Prithviraj in Stop Violence


Stop Violence would have become a memorable film if AK Sajan had at least succeeded in his imitation of RGV. He shows us few nicely edited, fast paced visuals, shows lot of blood and murders, but he fails in developing a novel and interesting storyline and characters. The first hour is comparatively neat, but later the film falls into clichés, and Sathan's confession and change doesn't go well with the cold-bloodedness in his character that we were shown in the initial scenes. Towards the climax, Sathan appears as a very decent man, talking nicely constructed dialogues, and we would almost feel that he is Prithviraj himself. The only interesting points in the film are the amusement in watching a Malayalam film in the RGV format, and to see Prithviraj giving a convincing performance as Sathan in the first half of the film, especially considering that this was only the third or fourth film in his career. Vijayaraghavan also gives a good performance, even though he has been doing such roles for ages. Chandra Lakshman (this was her first film) acts naturally in many scenes, and I think she is being wasted in soap television serials these days.

This film was initially named Violence, and it seems the censor board felt that this name would encourage the Kerala youth to indulge in violence, hence they asked the producers to add a "Stop" in front of "Violence", so that it will give an instant strong message to the Malayalees and purify their minds.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Ratheesh,

I also felt the movie was junk overall. I watched it only partly but whatever I saw, I felt it was boring. Prithviraj looks like a goonda in first half, however his voice is that of a 10 year old boy which does not suit his tough looks

Regards
Suraj

10:14 PM  

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