LockUp directed by SG Charles is a thriller that lacks coherence at some of its major moments. It is trying to set up an interesting plot in a constrained amount of time. But when they tried to give the screenplay the necessarily complicated layers, it felt so unreal. The film was constantly fluctuating between the terrible zone and the promising zone. And the preachy end product just doesn’t have enough excitement to make you vote for the movie.
Vasanth a young police constable, who is desperately looking for a promotion, so that he can convince his lover’s family for their marriage, is our main protagonist. Moorthy is his senior in the station and he is also in need of a promotion. One day, the in-charge officer of their police station gets murdered and a woman is found dead in a nearby river. The connection between these two deaths and how certain foul plays in it affect these two officers is what LockUp showing us.
In certain aspects, there is this vague Rashomon style in the script. But SG Charles can’t create the charm or dilemma of that style in his screenplay. At one point we are shown how one secret camera footage plays a key role in complicating the things. And there is another scene featuring another secret camera operation. Those two sequences felt like the writer created them out of desperation when he couldn’t link the subplots. And these kinds of thrillers need to be foolproof and logical and there are so many instances in this movie where we would feel LockUp wasn’t paying attention to those details.
Imagine watching a thriller that creates a convincing investigation story in the beginning and then breaks the whole theory we believed to present another convincing story. In Lock Up, SG Charles is ambitiously doing this and here he is breaking the theory multiple times. Sometimes it is the hero, sometimes it is the villain, and sometimes it is a supporting character who was never even there in the picture till that point. It was actually a great premise to present some ethical and moral conflicts. But the screenplay is depending too much on coincidences and verbal explanations.
Vaibhav was fine as the clueless and selfish police officer who was desperate to get out of the mess. Venkat Prabhu was surprisingly good as the grey shaded greedy Moorthy. I loved the subtle variations he used, to present the character. Eeswari Rao has an extensive role here, but the writing was too loud and it sort of reduced the smartness she was supposed to have. Poorna aka Shamna Kasim was okay as Malliga and Vani Bhojan as the love interest of Vasanth was pretty much inconsequential to the film.
LockUp is a movie that I would say I felt disappointed. The idea behind the movie and the structure of the screenplay had so much scope to be a thriller that lingers on your mind. But the flawed writing disappoints you at regular intervals of time, giving it the vibe of a wasted shot at creating a better cinema.
The flawed writing disappoints you at regular intervals of time, giving it the vibe of a wasted shot at creating a better cinema.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
