Banking Hours 10 to 4

The two good things about director K Madhu’s new outing “Banking Hours 10 to 4” is that the length of the movie is short and there is no big budget spent for outdoor shooting. Other than these two factors the movie is an utter disappointment. A seriously lame script and cliché directional treatment makes this movie a teasing experience. It tests our patience and at some points questions our intelligence.

The movie is about a crime that happens during a robbery attempt in Lemo bank. With a lot of characters of various shades of life in one floor, the mission of the investigating officer is to find the guilty, who is actually right there. How he did this job is the core of this so called suspense thrillers plot.

Well the plot seems to have freshness when you look at it as a Malayalam movie. But we have seen this type of stories in Bollywood and Hollywood. The treatment of the movie is quite similar to Traffic at the beginning. But the outdated direction and silly script powered by poor technical backup make us forget about the first half of the movie. A relatively engaging second half is also spoiled by a usual suspense thriller climax formula.

On screen, Anoop Menon may have done this movie for just income. It doesn’t really test him at all. Meghna Raj disappoints big time. Jishnu was impressive, but his dialog delivery was a bit disturbing. For me Tiny Tom is the only actor in the movie who gave something for the audience to cheer about. A lot of supporting cast is there and most of them are not even used.

Technically it’s a mess. Direction is quite poor. Screenplay is childish in first half and predictable in second half. Dialogs and reactions are quite a cliché. The screenplay unwontedly includes a lot of character to give it parallel story feel to it. But they miserably fail to conclude it in a proper way and make the audience wonder why these characters were there in the movie. BGM was out of sync and camera work was average.

Overall, Banking Hours 10 to 4 is a boring experience. Some may feel that it’s not bad. But my question is how many times we have seen this? Should we promote these? The movie is a letdown and I am giving a generous 2/5 for this movie. It could have been much much better with a fresh script and refreshing direction.