Eesho

I am pretty sure every promotional material of the new SonyLIV movie Eesho will have one thing in common. There will be taglines similar to “if you have a daughter/ if you are a father, you should watch this film” There are movies that are made to utilize this good-intent sentiment of people. Eesho, directed by Nadirshah, is one such exploitation. With an assembled screenplay that will make you happy by proving your predictions correct, Eesho is a forgettable thriller in a minimal setup.

Ramachandran Pillai is an ATM security guy who is also a key witness in a POCSO case. Since the culprit in the case was a highly powerful person, there was a lot of pressure on Pillai. There was a plan from the enemies to finish him once he decided to be the witness. The movie’s focus is the night before his day at the court to record his statement. He meets this stranger named Eesho and what happens after Eesho’s arrival is what we see in this movie.

As I said in the beginning, some movies are written by keeping some social evil at their center. Rather than a compelling element, these movies are always trying to be preachy in totality. And when they try to act smart, the treatment will become cliched and familiar. Written by Suneesh Varanad, who previously wrote Manju Warrier starrer “Mohanlal,” the problem with Eesho is its predictability and the way it underestimates the viewer’s intelligence to crack suspense. Everything this movie reveals as some big revelation would have already crossed the audience’s minds at the event’s first occurrence.

Eesho is a cakewalk character for someone like Jayasurya. Because of the amount of “goodness” characters he has played on screen, it becomes challenging for the movie to place him in that gray and negative shade. Jaffar Idukki, who plays the role of the security guard gets the best character in the film. He has the film’s longest screen time and delivered a very convincing performance. These two are the only major characters in the movie with commendable screen time. Namitha Pramod, Johny Antony, Suresh Krishna, Akshara Kishor, Yadu Krishnan, etc., are the other major names in the star cast.

The cinematography of Roby Raj Varghese helps the film attain a visual eeriness. But Nadirshah can’t really elevate the script to make things suspenseful and gripping. The way Eesho plays with Pillai is extremely guessable, and it somewhere exposes their creative hastiness to conclude a film. In the film’s last act, when Eesho starts to tell his story to Pillai, the interest in the movie has already drained out. Eesho feels more like a film that was written after deciding that it would be issue-based with minimal locations, and that clearly restricts it from being imaginative.

Making it engaging and affecting for a viewer is a crucial part of creating a thriller. Eesho from Nadirshah is struggling in that aspect of filmmaking. Suneesh Varanad applies this age-old formula of mixing revenge and customized justice in a tasteless format to deliver a generic “socially-relevant” thriller that they will market using family sentiment.

By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.

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