Ore Mukham

The film Ore Mukham’s major portion is set in the 80’s. And the issue with the entire movie is that it has been written and directed as if it was a movie released in the 80’s. With every character speaking all those printed dialogues and the quintessential thrill not getting created at any point makes Ore Mukham a below average film that could have been much better.

Zachariah Pothen is the central protagonist of the movie. He is a missing criminal who was the main accused of a double homicide in the 80’s. In the present day, the police are investigating the murder case of Aravindan, a close friend of Pothen in the college days. As the last call Aravindan received was from Pothen’s number, police investigation and the investigation of a journalist is focusing on Zachariah Pothen. The film Ore Mukham shows us who Zachariah Pothen is and what actually happened in the past.

A bad boy hero, he rules the campus. When the heroine realizes that he is this man full of goodness inside, a guy who does anything for his friends, she decides to love him. If this sounds cliché to you, then that’s how the treatment of the story of Ore Mukham feels like. When you make a quirky presentation of the 80’s or 90’s, copying the dramatic movie style of those days is an acceptable method. But in the case of Ore Mukham everything looks like that Venu Nagavally era of college movies. Movie making has always shown a gradual growth and here director Sajith Jagadnandan revisits the old times and even the film making style.

Except for a few humorous moments that featured Aju Varghese, there isn’t any precise area in the film you might remember for its good making. Like I already said, the presentation lacks realness. From the present day characters to the ones in the bell bottom age, everyone is speaking the theater drama dialogues. In fact the very first scene itself where Devan is talking with a pistol in his hands gives a clear indication about how the conversations are going to be. Reiterating style of scripting to approach a single scene in a different way is something we have seen in films like Classmates. But here the screenplay format that shuffles the two investigations isn’t really exciting. Satheesh Kurup’s frames were good, but the color tones to represent various time zones at times looked awkward. Music also repeats the old school tunes and the usage of background score is also a bit too much.

Even though there are scenes in the second half which in a way tries to justify Dhyan’s casting as Zachariah Pothen, he still isn’t the Zachariah Pothen we want to see from whatever versions we hear in the movie. A kind of grace was needed to do that character and unfortunately it wasn’t there in his performance. The character of Das portrayed by Aju Varghese and Maniyanpilla Raju has a key role in the film and both were nice in being true to the emotional state of the character in the respective times. Prayaga Martin with her “Pisaasu” stare and good enough acting delivers a good performance. The movie has an elaborate cast including names like Arjun Nandhakumar (They could have tried Vijay Babu instead of Devan), Deepak Parambol, Gayathri Suresh, Chemban Vinod, Renji Panicker, Jewel Mary, Devi Ajith and lots more.

Ore Mukham is stuck in the 80’s and as we as an audience have reached 2016, it isn’t really absorbing as a thriller. After seeing that ultimate friendship driven revenge idea of the film, the chances of you saying “They could have made it better” is definitely there.

Rating: 2/5