Idiyan Chandhu Review | Peter Hein’s Action Is Not Enough to Cover up the Flaws of This Lackluster Movie

The success of something like an RDX may have been the reason why director Sreejith Vijayan and actor Vishnu Unnikrishnan decided to make something like Idiyan Chandhu. But it seems like both of them has not really cracked the reason why RDX worked. As an idea, RDX is a very basic revenge story. But what made that movie a massive success was the placement and execution of certain events that made the audience, even the ones who hate to see violence, root for the heroes. The problem with Idiyan Chandhu is that it knows the points at which the action must happen, but it just doesn’t know how to reach those points.

So Chandhu, our hero, had a very toxic childhood, and he had seen his mother getting abused by his father, and later his father got murdered by a bunch of goons. When a lot of people instigated Chandhu when he didn’t react in certain situations, it led to this version of Chandhu who was extremely violent. But after a point, violence becomes a headache for the family, and what we see is that phase in Chandhu’s life where he decides to stay away from any sort of violence to keep the promise he made to his mother.

This is not a format we have not seen in movies. It is just a slightly reworked version of the History of Violence template. The audience is well aware of the fact that, at one point, our hero will lose it and become the beast he is. But like how RDX managed to make the audience root for the action, here, the effort is not there on a writing level. The generic beats of the story are taking things forward, and even the fight feels pretty sluggish. The only fight sequence that felt like a Peter Hein fight sequence, because of the detailing one can see in it, was the one right after the interval featuring Biju Sopanam and Vishnu Unnikrishnan. The low-budget Avengers Endgame-like final fight is placed in a hurried manner and just can’t create an adrenaline euphoria around it.

As per the poster and title, it may seem like the loudest character Vishnu Unnikrishnan has ever played, but in reality, it is one of the calmest characters with the least number of dialogues for the actor. In most of the scenes, the actor has this restrained body language. The most important aspect is his approach toward pulling off action sequences and frankly, it only gives you an okay feel. Lenaa, with that odd-looking wig, gets to play the role of Vishnu Unnikrishan’s mother. Lalu Alex, who has a history of playing the cool father in Malayalam cinema, is playing the role of a cool father (priest) who, as the principal of the school, is announcing on the mic to beat the hell out of the goons.

Jayashree Shivadas is the female lead, along with Vidhya Vijayakumar as the carefree bestie. The pitch of Vidhya’s performance is so evidently loud and comical that she feels like an annoying addition. And that is a problem considering the relevance of her character in the movie. Biju Sopanam gets to show his swagger in that action bit. Chandu Salimkumar’s Tamil dialect is somewhat awkward even though his body language and screen presence is appreciable. Gayathri Arun, Sminu Sijo, Johny Antony, Kichu Tellus, etc., are the other names in the cast.

Sreejith Vijayan, who had previously made Kuttanadan Marppappa and Margam Kali, is trying to make a true blue action film here. From the very first sequence, what we are seeing is fights. But the script is not trying anything different, and some of the humor featuring Johny Antony, Ramesh Pisharody, etc., felt like filler sequences that stood out and didn’t really make any contribution to the core idea. Even when that insighting incident happens in the last quarter of the movie, we are not getting emotionally invested, because it is actually preceded by a pointless comedy sequence. The focus on packaging it as an action film has made the writing very ordinary. Maybe they might have thought that the final school fight would blow the minds of the audience and they won’t complain about the cliched script. But sadly, Peter Hein can’t really make that chaotic fight sequence charismatic.

Just when you think the movie is over, like many other movies in the recent past, we get to see the introduction of the real “villain.” And they make this announcement that “Idi Thudarum.” It is interesting how filmmakers lose their judgment in post-production and become extremely delusional about what they have made.