Oru Kuprasidha Payyan

The second half of the movie Oru Kuprasidha Payyan rests largely on the shaky shoulders of Nimisha Sajayan and let me tell you that some segment of the audience was clapping for the findings made by her character. I am telling you about the audience response as I personally found those moments really underwhelming and to be honest, Oru Kuprasidha Payyan has hardly anything that will make you feel that it is made by a man who made bold movies in terms of theme and treatment with movies like Thalappavu and Ozhimuri. With a script that has zero intrigues to its credit, Oru Kuprasidha Payyan from Madhupal was a letdown for me.

Ajayan is this naive young man who doesn’t have anyone. He is that character who doesn’t even know his age. He works in a local restaurant and one day the lady whom he looked at as a motherly figure who delivered food to the restaurant got murdered. Eventually, Ajayan, who doesn’t have anyone, gets framed so that the crime branch can close the case. How Ajayan manages to escape from this mess with the help of a female advocate named Hanna, who is appearing for her first ever case is what Oru Kuprasidha Payyan showing us.

The first half of the movie is a setup for a second half that is mainly a courtroom drama. The problem is that Madhupal and his writer Jeevan Job Thomas aren’t investing any time in making things look gripping. You don’t get the feeling that Ajayan is in a big trap. And whenever Nimisha Sajayan’s character sort of breaks the prosecution and crime branch’s claims, my feeling was that why such basic things weren’t noted by so many people. It seemed like Hanna became a star just because the crime branch conducted a lazy investigation. Nedumudi Venu plays the role of the big advocate who is far superior and cunning than Hanna and almost every time when his character stands up, it wasn’t to factually counter the claims of Hanna. He just stands and says all these are fabricated lies like an accused political leader. And then there is a climax where we are sort of expecting the screenplay to be very exciting, but the movie ends with a bland court judgment.

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Tovino Thomas’s character of Ajayan is a really precarious one. The sort of naivety and nerd feel of the character was rarely under his control. Glimpses of overacting can be seen most of the times and looking at the way the climax has been edited, I think the editor sort of decided not to use Tovino’s expressions. Nimisha Sajayan’s acting is a bit tough to judge. There is a sense of lack of confidence in her performance which is kind of annoying in certain sequences and helpful when she is that nervous first timer. Anu Sithara has a pointless role. Siddique showed his usual grace in a clichéd character. The fact that almost the entire audience hated his character is a clear indication to the fact that Nedumudi Venu was good in his character. Saranya Ponvannan was nice. Sujith Shankar lacked flow in his performance. G Suresh Kumar as the mature judge was surprisingly good.

Without a doubt, one can say that this is the least impressive movie among the three movies Madhupal has made to date. Both the structuring of the screenplay and the compromises in terms of making it look like a commercial Tovino Thomas movie has backfired for Oru Kuprasidha Payyan. The script sort of exposes all its details in the first half and then lets us watch a first-time advocate find all those things using whatever little information she has got. The problem with such a structure is that it will become an extremely tough task for the makers to make it look exciting and that was exactly the problem with Oru Kuprasidha Payyan. Too much of emphasis is given on the society’s behavior and the police method rather than explaining that as an undercurrent of a thriller plot. You won’t feel much of a difficulty in unraveling the plot from Hanna’s point of view. The love story, introduction bullfight, and even that jail stunt are things I seriously don’t want to see in a movie from a maker who made Thalappavu and Ozhimuri. The other technical aspects of the movie were really underwhelming.

At a time where a movie like Thondimuthalum Dhriksakshiyum worked for an evolved audience, Madhupal’s decision to dilute his cinematic approach and step away from his niche was a bad idea. And I hope Oru Kuprasidha Payyan will make him aware of that and go back to the kind of themes he should approach without any sense of compromise.

Rating: 2/5