Nibunan

Nibunan from director Arun Vaidyanathan is a crime thriller that has its own scattered moments. It is the 150th film of Arjun and to be honest the desperation to make this a tribute to him ends up in awkward outdated moments of heroism. With the standard pattern of serial killer movies getting repeated here Nibunan is a non-boring but unexciting film.

ASP of police Ranjith Kalidoss and his team mates Joseph and Vandana are a very capable team of officers who have cracked a lot of cases. One fine day they receive a strange gift from someone and following that incident a murder happens that had some links with the gift they received. The team realizes the fact that this is the work of a psycho killer and the film Nibunan is about the investigation to find the killer.

The format of the film has quite a lot of similarities with Malayalam movie Memories. Arjun plays the role of the police officer who investigates and the serial killer is leaving clues for the team to solve the puzzle. Like Sam had drinking problem in Memories, Arun Vaidyanathan adds a challenge to his hero by making him a Parkinson’s patient. As the movie follows the recipe of a typical serial killer story, the surprises are more inclined to the hero worshipping angle. Towards the end there were too many indigestible over the top things like social media trending and Parkinson’s almost becoming the mass factor etc.

Considering the mediocrity of Arjun’s last few films, I would say he has done a better script selection. A movie that has been marketed as Action King Arjun’s 150th movie, don’t have that much of action to be honest. The actor has the swagger and physical fitness to be the police officer. Varalaxmi Sarathkumar has the coolness to be that police character while Prasanna looked a bit too comical for the role. Sruthi Hariharan was good in her character.

Arun Vaidyanath whom Malayalam audience would recognize as the director of Peruchazhi, hasn’t broken any patterns here. What I felt was that he has sort of reduced the possible number of hero worshipping sequences. But still it is there. Almost the first half an hour and a few minutes in the last quarter is dedicated to glorify the hero. When it comes to murder mystery and investigation part, it is quite typical for those who have seen other serial killer thrillers. And practicality issues are also there. Through dialogues and certain procedures we see in the film, Arun is trying to make it look real and it works partially. Cinematography was fine and the music was on the average side.

Nibunan isn’t a novel thought. When compared to Arjun’s last few releases (like Jai Hind 2), this one at least has got the grammar correctly. But still the overall product isn’t that completely convincing.

Rating: 2.5/5