Pakida

Many movies where made in the recent past focusing on the harassment faced by women. Most of these films failed in becoming a real eye opener and Sunil Karyattukara’s Pakida is no different from the others in terms of quality. If having some social commitment in the script is enough to please you, this film may well be a watchable thriller for you, but for me it was a disappointment.

The story revolves around Aadhi, a jobless engineering graduate in Kochi who spends most of his time with friends. The unfocused Aadhi and his father doesn’t maintain a pleasing chemistry. An unfortunate accident to one of his friends leaves Aadhi in a financially difficult spot and this desperate situation makes him accompany a mysterious man in a journey to Madurai as he was offered money. The movie fundamentally is about this journey of Aadhi with the mystery man.

In the recent Mannaar Mathai Speaking sequel Biju Menon convincingly played the role of a mad man. The writer’s aim here was to create a character like the one played by Naseerudhin Shah in A Wednesday, but when they showed the very last scene of the movie Pakida, I thought Biju Menon was playing the role of the same mad man of MMS2. The first half and the first half of the second half of the movie is neither boring nor exciting. It’s after that where the movie really steps in to the Karmayodha mode. With all the ganja, liquor ingredients they have created a half baked cool friendship. A twist similar to Joshiy ‘s Sevens takes our hero to the conflict zone. Then a few sequences are there which were squeezed in just to justify the word game in the tagline. The inclusion of the Madurai friend and the behavior of that character is totally awkward. The whole auto rickshaw sequence which lead to an Anwar style climax tussle (kabadi in sand) was amateurish. Many of the elements in the plot were irrelevant when you look at how they concluded the film.

Sunil Karyattukara has tried to go for an Amal Neerad style of making with occasional slow motion and emotionless rendering of punch dialogues, but the style that Amal manages to bring in even poorly written scenes was really missing here. The script doesn’t have that conviction to present things in a sensible and intriguing way. The dialogues aren’t sharp enough to grab your attention. Cinematography is okay. “Ee Pooveyilil” song from Bijibal was really nice, but the background score somewhere reminded me of Mumbai Police.

Asif Ali has played his stereo typed character nicely. I found the Big B kind of attitude of Biju Menon’s character really funny ( can blame the dialogues for that). Assim Jamal as the antagonist was good. Shine Tom Chako was hilarious in the climax fight. Malavika Nair gets one more largely mute character. Aju Varghese, Sajid Yahiya, Apoorva Bhose  etc have done their not so important roles without much annoyance.

Overall Pakida is a disappointing film. The movie wont move you emotionally or thrill you commercially. My rating is 2/5 for Pakida. The best you can say about the movie is – “not that good”. Game over.