Keedam

Compared to Rahul Riji Nair’s last two theatrical releases Dakini and Kho Kho, Keedam, his new film starring Rajisha Vijayan, is a much more refined presentation. But the story and its drama are pretty much on the superficial level that the movie fails to create any impact on the viewer. The fluency in performances and the minimal runtime have definitely helped Keedam in being less bland.

Radhika Balan is the co-founder of a cyber security startup. One day she happens to dial a wrong number, and the guy who got the call starts to torture her by calling her late at night and sending porn clips. Radhika decided to go for legal action, but the torture continued. The fight of Radhika to get those folks punished is what we see in Keedam.

When Keedam begins giving us an idea about the fragile state of cyber security and its laws, it gives us an impression that there will be a deep dive into that world. But the scripting pattern is targetting an audience who doesn’t even have a basic idea of privacy, data security, and hacking. And there is this urgency in the script to get into that vigilante justice Shankar movie zone. And the simplistic nature of that phase of the movie, along with the pattern one can sense, Keedam somewhere becomes this movie where makers use the socially relevant theme as an excuse to cover up the unimaginative writing.

Making actors speak the dialogues precisely the way it was written in the script was a major discomfort I had felt in Rahul Riji Nair’s Dakini and Kho Kho. As I mentioned in the beginning, his presentation is much more refined, and almost everyone on screen feels a bit real because of that. The lack of nuances in writing is what takes away the engaging factor from Keedam. The whole “Muthumani” twist in the last quarter feels like a tool the scriptwriters used almost a decade ago, and it was more like a forcefully added tweak when the writing hit a roadblock. The fight sequence featuring Vijay Babu also lasted for quite a long time.

Rajisha Vijayan is seen in yet another energetic and dynamic avatar. The anger she shows and the smile of achievement on her face, etc., make her a perfect choice for this role. Sreenivasan plays the role of Radhika’s father, Balan, and he was a convincing choice as a concerned father. Vijay Babu plays the role of a police officer, and it wasn’t much of a challenge. Manikandan Pattambi gets an interesting role as one of the antagonists. Mahesh Nair as Biju was really good. The rest of the cast includes Renjit Shekar Nair, Anand Manmadhan, Rahul Riji Nair himself, and a few more names.

Keedam starts off being ambitious and then suddenly shrinks its canvas to a superficial cat and mouse game. When Rajisha Vijayan walks in slow-motion at the very end of the movie, the audience is supposed to feel some goosebumps. Unfortunately, the emotional curve of the script is extremely flat, and it just can’t create the feel Rahul Riji Nair aspired to have.