Cuban Colony

Cuban Colony came with the tagline “Gangs of Angamaly”. And guess what? Director Lijo Jose Pellissery and Academy Award winner Resul Pookkutty were among the well-wishers of the film who shared the trailer in social media which made me watch this movie on the first day itself skipping the world cup quarter finals. My expectations weren’t that high, but the movie corrected me. Within the first 15 minutes itself, the movie communicated the truth very clearly that the next 100 minutes will be a test of patience that even a vipassana expert can’t survive.

Don’t ask me what the story is. Not because it will be a spoiler. Even if I take this entire article to narrate the story, in the end, you will still ask what is the story? We get to see a murder in the very first sequence. After that, we get to see a hella lot of gangster problems and at the end of all this, there is a connection between all the stupidity on screen with the first scene in the movie which will only generate a lengthy facepalm.

Have you guys ever wondered when some people say they liked movies like Angamaly Diaries or Gangs of Wasseypur that whether these guys have got the point or are they just enjoying the macho side of violence? After watching Cuban Colony, I kind of felt that the director Manoj Varghese Parecattil just got obsessed with movies with gangster violence and decided to shoot a one-liner without taking an effort to write a proper script. In his mind, gang wars happen for really silly reasons. He just wants to include a lot of fight sequences, bloodshed, sexism, slow-motion walks and ridiculous plot twists. There are some random comedy sequences in the movie that looks pathetic. I still wonder how the director might have pitched the story idea.

Coming to the performances, Jino Johan and Sreekanth Dasan are the only faces that people might have seen in any other film. As always Jino is eccentric and he is a CID in this movie, a subplot that shows the poverty in writing. Sreekanth Dasan is the guy who played the role of Paripp Marty in Angamaly diaries. Director Manoj Varghese Parecattil himself portrays one important in the movie which also is a poorly written one. Able Benny, Aiswarya Unni (zero expressions), Anagha Maria Ann, Vaishnav Vijay etc. are the other cast members I could find the names of.

Manoj Varghese Parecattil is clueless about how to stitch scenes together. First 15 minutes there is a football match, then a comedy scene, then a fight and the film becomes a series of such disjoint sequences that don’t really affect the narrative. And for the majority of the time, you wonder why they all have to fight every time and the movie answers that questions like “This is Angamaly and people here are like that.” Songs are coming out without relevance and in many places, you can see the movie imitating Angamaly Diaries in an extremely tacky way. The cinematography is average and the cuts are wayward. I am actually struggling to write something as this movie is 129 minutes of nothingness.

Cuban Colony gave me a terrible headache. I felt angry seeing the sheer ridiculousness of making a movie without a proper idea and also the audacity of the makers to believe that stuffing anything with gangster attitude will get market.

Rating: 0.5/5