John Luther

An investigating officer becoming hearing impaired is a roadblock that can actually make a thriller take exciting twists and turns. The kind of twist that happens in John Luther, the new movie starring Jayasurya as the title protagonist, looks excellent on paper. But the convoluted nature of its presentation somewhere diminishes the charm of the premise it had built.

John Luther is the Circle Inspector in charge of the Devikulam police station, and he is investigating a political murder case. In the midst of that, an accident happened in his station’s jurisdiction, and they found out that one person who was involved in that accident was missing. As days went by, the number of missing people increased to 3. John loses his ability to hear during the investigation due to an accident. The struggle and efforts of John Luther to complete this investigation are what we see in John Luther.

Director Abhijith Joseph’s treatment is a bit uneven, in my opinion. In the initial bits of the movie, where we are shown the first death, the treatment is pretty intriguing. But the parallel track they had kept only to mute the world for Luther stood out. The practical scenario they showed to make us understand the struggle of John was pretty effective. But the motivational speech from the father kind of induced a cringe. The revealing of the villain looked promising, but then they stretched it far too much with fewer surprises.

The visual language of the movie is really impressive. Roby Varghese Raj’s visuals accentuate the eerie feel of the setting, and it helps the film maintain a sense of tension even when the beats become familiar to us. It is actually the stretched and complicated third act that diminishes the uniqueness of this thriller. Shaan Rahman’s music and score were on the typical side.

A couple of weeks back, Jayasurya lost his voice in Meri Awas Suno, and now he has a problem with his ear. And I really liked the way he made slight changes in his performance to accommodate that disability. Siddique plays his typical supportive father character in this film. Deepak Parambol is the assisting police officer along with Sivadas Kannur. Senthil Krishna and Elango Kumaravel delivered memorable performances as the nephew and the uncle.

John Luther starts off promisingly and even puts its hero in a difficult situation. But somewhere in the middle, when the fog around the culprit started to fade, the movie started to feel predictable, and the efforts to stay away from those predictions reduced the conviction of this thriller.