Double Barrel

Two helicopters, six cameras for one shot, five hotshot young heroes, enormous cast, wonderful technicians and all this for an insane creation that has nothing to captivate the audience. Technically the movie Double Barrel has pushed the envelope a lot, but the ultimate product is so shoddy that you tend to forget about the efforts they might have done behind the camera.

Well from the trailer itself the basic storyline is predictable. Pancho and Vinci are being hired by an old don to do a jewel stone trade. The duo gem Laila Majnu needs to be together to have a value (approx. 100 crores). Pancho and Vinci’s attempt to get these stones by paying the amount the don asked for and the subsequent troubles that come in their way is what double barrel telling us.

Well the trailer did give an impression that the movie may not appeal to the masses as it did look unconventional. But this wannabe gangster comedy hits an unbelievable low with its lack of content. From the guy who promised a lot, I was expecting that it would strike me in a creative way. But what Lijo has done is adding a different sort of chaos to what Priyadarshan used to do. If they are saying it was a spoof, then I will have to believe that they were spoofing the idea of movie making. The festival of characters doesn’t intrigue you in any way. Snatch had style and Pulp fiction had the beauty of conversations, and what does Double Barrel have? Costumes? The jokes that somewhat followed the same pattern of Amen in presentation works only sporadically.

Lijo Jose Pellissery definitely has an idea to conceive visuals in an engrossing manner. But the trouble of Double barrel is that what he has written (if they had a script to shoot this madness) is simply “laughing and firing”. A basic cat and mouse idea gets too many characters and excessively stylized treatment with flawed comical feel. FYI, I have not applied logic to analyze the content. Abhinandan Ramanujam once again does an impressive job in making the visual experience a good treat. The background score and music doesn’t work for you as the movie itself is a big bore. The placing of the songs once again makes me think whether Lijo was spoofing any particular method of film making. The costume department has done a good job. I have heard that some fabulous technical enhancements were made in the sound design of the movie. The visual effects usage was quite visible in those gunshots.

The Prithviraj – Indrajith combo somewhat struggled with their comical expression (Indran was slightly better). Arya somewhat becomes an annoyance and Chemban wasn’t used at all. Every other actor in the movie has this excessive comical feel and all the actors failed to deliver that with the sort of quirkiness you would expect. Cant understand the “necessity” of Asif Ali and Sunny Wayne in this movie.

So to sum it up, I am totally shattered seeing something like this from the most promising Lijo Jose Pellissery. Double Barrel gets 1.5/5 from my side. Even without logic this movie is a dud.