Rekhachithram Review | Alternate History Trope Keeps This Generic Thriller Afloat

Rekhachithram, the latest movie from Jofin T Chacko, who previously made Mammootty starrer Priest, had a buzz around it largely because of the alternate history genre assigned to it. But when you look at the movie in its totality, you can see that this alternative history trope is used more as a tool to enhance a generic crime thriller that has a peculiar premise to its credit. With the effective inclusion of one or more real-life elements at the correct points, Rekhachithram is a passable thriller with evident compromises.

Vivek Gopinath is a Kerala Police CI who was suspended for playing online rummy while on duty. After suspension, he was posted at a rural station in Malakkappara. But on the day of joining a suicide case was reported in his station’s jurisdiction, and it was a sensational case because of the person who died. What we see in this movie is the investigation done by Vivek to find out the link between this suicide and a missing case that was registered long back in 1985.

It was evident from the trailer and the promotion interviews that the movie has a direct link with the Bharathan movie Kathodu Kathoram, which was released in 1985. And to be frank, everyone who was watching the film was very much interested in knowing how Jofin and his writers Ramu Sunil and John Manthrickal have tried to include that in the film. The thing is, on a script level, there isn’t anything remarkably original about the story. It is like, even if we were not able to predict the culprit, you wouldn’t feel like you didn’t see that coming once what had happened is revealed. The beats of the investigation become unexciting at certain moments, and in those moments, the script gets a slight boost when something related to Kathodu Kathoram happens on screen.

What was interesting about the alternate history treatment of the movie was how a second track of alternate history felt more exciting than the much-hyped Kathodu Kathoram inclusion. That track actually gives us a better idea about the female character, and it significantly helps the film to have a sense of emotional high as the mystery part is not that unpredictable. The dialogues, especially the ones we hear in the flashback portions, have a very artificial feel to their credit, and even in the present-day portions, Jofin is not able to refine the scenes to make them more natural. There is an effort to make it a tribute to several legends of cinema who were active in the ’80s, and in certain areas, I felt it could have been less dramatic and more subtle.

Asif Ali, as CI Vivek Gopinath, keeps the character somewhere in between what he did in Kuttavum Shikshayum and Thalavan. It is not a character with a wide spectrum of emotions, and he was fine in it. There were a couple of occasions in the film where scenes were treated in order to accommodate an action block. The crime branch sequence and the introduction to the character played by Sudhi Kopa have this intention to make Asif Ali’s character your typical cinematic police, and because of the nature of this film, that felt like an evident compromise. Anaswara Rajan, who plays the central character in the film, also delivered a fine performance, and she never made the Mammootty infatuation of that character look cringe-worthy on screen. There were a lot of characters that were present in both the past and present of the story, and Jofin has opted for casting real-life fathers and sons for that, including Jenuse Mohamed, who is director Kamal’s son. Other major performers in the movie include names like Srikanth Murali, Manoj K Jayan, Indrans, Nishanth Sagar, Megha Thomas, and Siddique. Aattam fame Zarin Shihab gets a pretty interesting role in the film.

Rekhachithram has appreciable aspirations, as meddling with real-life events is a tricky thing to pull off. While the thriller beats of the movie had the usual vibe to its credit, the minimal area in the film that shows us the history of the mysterious female character and the journey of the hero to know that story had that emotional element, which Jofin T Chacko sort of accentuates in the finale with an invisible megastar presence.