Mura Review | This Inverted “Pani” Features Solid Action Sequences but Falls Short of Emotional Intensity

Mura, Muhammad Musthafa’s new movie after his impressive directorial debut, Kappela, is almost like watching Pani from the perspective of the villains. It is somewhat like what if Joju George was the bad guy and the boys were on the right side? Written by Suresh Babu, the script of this bloodshed-rich action thriller has the usual beats. But by making the character dynamics look a lot more natural on screen, Musthafa manages to take this movie into a tempting zone. Unfortunately, the friendship angle that led to the final frame of the film needed a stronger buildup to make us feel that emotion.

Mura is basically about four boys in her early twenties. The jobless folks decide to enter the gangster world to earn easy money. At one point, a major gang leader, Ani, impressed by the attitude of the boys, asks them whether they are interested in doing something big. The possibility of one operation making their entire life sorted prompts the boys to agree to do the job. What’s that big deal, how it got executed, and what all happened once it was done is what we see in Mura.

The reason why Pani worked for the audience was because the acts of the antagonists were extremely inhuman, and they were doing all that because their ego was hurt. Even though the hero’s side was strong, the lack of information and the fearlessness were making those people fear the bad guys. In the case of Mura, since the perspective of the movie is different, the fear of the bad guys should have made us root for the boys. But somewhere, the script has difficulties in creating moments that would make us empathize with this reckless boy gang. When the film sort of reveals that none of the things in the whole operation was coincidental, rather than surprise, the audience is getting the feel of watching something that is cliched.

Musthafa knows how to bring out the best in his actors and also to present the sequences in a raw format. The cinematic exaggerations are pretty minimal when you see how dialogues are delivered in this movie. And one of the major highlights and the most appreciable part is the way action sequences are executed. More than the brutality, I loved how Chamman Chacko stitched those sequences without breaking the flow of the action. The fight sequence that happens in Trivandrum city was really exhilarating. The background score by Christy Joby also deserves a special mention. The missing factor in the movie was the emotional impact. Because we could also see who would be the bad guys, there is a lack of emotional intensity when you see Anandu in that fully enraged mode. As I mentioned before, the final frame in the film would have had a bigger impact if the journey of the characters were a bit more heartfelt.

I was a bit skeptical about the performance of Hridhu Haroon, especially due to the Mookkamanda dialogue one gets to hear in the trailer. But when it came to the film, the dialogue rendering never became a major issue, and the furious avatar of Anandu was safe in his hands. Suraj Venjaramood, as the leader, Ani, gives you convincing star Suresh Krishna vibes from the beginning. While the minimalism and overall attitude he gave for the character were convincing, the mass transformation bits felt a bit tacky as he lacked that grace. The real surprise for me in the casting was Mala Parvathy, who did a pretty fabulous job as the ruthless antagonist. The other three boys in the gang, played by Anujith Kannan, Jobin Das, and Yedhu Krishnan, were also pretty good.

In Pani, when we really get a picture of what the antagonists could do, the tension sort of seeps into us, and that was the reason why the movie felt extremely intense, and precisely why the final bit paid off. But in Mura, when Anandu is going through a phase of cluelessness, fear, and rage, we don’t have enough material here to root for him beyond the usual sympathy. If the script could have depicted the bonding of the characters in an intense manner, Mura had the scope to be a terrific film as the technical side had done an impressive job.