Paisa Paisa

The idea of Paisa Paisa is really appealing when you look at it as a short film. It’s one of those situational thrillers that utilize the desperation in humans. But sadly Paisa Paisa can’t reach its goal because of predictability and lack of total conviction. In an attempt to lock the protagonists from possible aids, the script fails to answer some questions and ends up as an average number.

Balu goes to Chennai to attend an interview and an auto driver kidnaps him and asks rupees ten thousand as a ransom to release him. Balu whose bank account was empty calls his friend Kishore and requests him to deposit the amount within two hours. The movie is about Kishore’s desperate attempts to get ten thousand rupees within this short time and deposit it in the bank at the earliest. With each character having personal issues to tackle in the midst of all this, Paisa Paisa tries to go beyond the kidnapping episode.

As I said earlier, the concept of the movie is an interesting one. We all might have faced similar situations where we can’t manage to get a relatively small amount of money, which we thought would be much easy.  But the reasons for closing the windows to Kishore were not that convincing. I can’t understand why the character was hiding the crucial kidnapping factor from his close ones as it could have easily lessened his burden. Even his personal life is getting screwed because of this. And to get this amount, he is doing so many things in that short span of time. Throughout the movie you won’t feel for the character for his helplessness and that’s mainly because of the untidy script.

In the making, Prashanth Murali has done an average work. What is limiting him from making the movie more beautiful is the script co written by the director himself. With clear answers and much more reasoning, Paisa Paisa would have managed to make us appreciate its attempt. The dialogs lacked charm. The cinematography is an ok one with a mix of dull and interesting shots. Edits and BGMs are out of sync and the BGM sounded as an overdose. Music is just average.

On the acting side, it’s not a challenging outing for any of the actors. Indrajith has the larger screen space and he has portrayed his character nicely. Aju Varghese was convincing as the innocent Balu. Mamtha’s role is doesn’t have much screen time and the character was also uninteresting. Daniel Balaji wasn’t used much. Rest of the cast including Apoorva Bose, Anoop Chandran, Sandhya etc did their part with required perfection.

On the whole, Paisa Paisa is just an average movie that had all its chances to create some engaging thrills on silver screen. I am giving the movie a generous 2.5/5. One suggestion, please don’t give Rs 15K (approx)worth phone and branded watch to your main protagonist while he is desperately trying to make Rs 10K to save his friend’s life.