The premise and the structuring of the latest Basil Joseph starrer, Pravinkoodu Shappu, is very enticing. It is one of those movies where the interval point somewhat acts like the climax, and hence, you will be curious to know how the story will move forward in the second half. The cat-and-mouse game that happens in the second half of this movie is eventful in terms of scale and also because of the eccentricity in the characters’ shaping. However, the back-and-forth nature of the narrative is not able to make the unraveling of the secrets appealing to the viewers. Pravinkoodu Shappu is a thoroughly engaging film that sort of misses out on having that climactic high.
The story is set in Thrissur, and SI Santhosh has recently taken charge. After his joining, a suicide case was reported at the station where a Toddy shop owner named Babu was found dead inside the shop. Egoistic CI, who wasn’t impressed by the textbook crime-solving methods of Santhosh, assigned him the responsibility to solve the mystery around this case, and what we see here is that investigation and its outcomes.
If the first half of the film is from the point of view of the police, the second half goes to the other side. If we are discovering everything through the character of SI Santhosh in the earlier portions, the latter part of the movie has us watching Santhosh discover certain things that we already know. For a crime thriller to feel fresh on screen, this type of treatment is essential, and as a viewer, I was invested in the movie because I was kind of hopeful that how the culprit pulled it off would have that wow factor. But maybe because of the luck factor in that whole thing along with the complications of the master plan, when you finally get to know who did it, it feels a bit over the top. Maybe Sreeraj Sreenivasan, who has written the film knows that aspect and he tries to salvage those areas with dark humor and succeeds to an extent.
I used to think of Basil Joseph as an actor who has a limited range and perhaps the scene with Balu Varghese in Jan-e-man and the film Kadina Kadoramee Andakadaham where some performances that made me think of him as an actor who can pull off any kind of role. In Pravinkoodu Shappu, Basil plays an SI who is not your macho guy and Sreeraj has written the character to accommodate the funny bits of Basil that the audience sort of expect. But there are areas in the film where he is being this sleazy officer obsessed about solving the case, and the middle ground of the pitch of the character he cracks was pretty good. Soubin Shahir portrayed the insecurities and anger of his character very convincingly, and the human element in the performance aided the drama in the story.
After a considerable gap, Chandini Sreedharan gets a meaty role in the film, and when you backtrack the character after the film, the pitch of the mood swings of that character would feel sensible. Chemban Vinod Jose gets an important character in the movie that wasn’t much of a challenge. Niyas Backer, as Silon Mammen, was fun to watch. Shivajith, as the ruthless Babu, is believable in terms of physique, and the performance had that element of remorselessness. Some of the unfamiliar actors who were the usual customers of the shop were hilarious. The actor who performed the role of the CI also deserves a shoutout.
Sreeraj Sreenivasan has built the story in a way that the audience fully depends on the second half to get something unique. Somewhere, I felt the script editing was reducing the charm of the big reveal. The foreshadowing is somewhat obvious, and a few of us would be anticipating that to come up at some point in the third act. But the criss-cross placement of those revealing portions is not getting the high you would anticipate. In fact, some of the deliberately placed distractions, like a bike sequence featuring Basil (or a stunt double) and a chase sequence featuring Soubin, were extremely well executed. Through the use of a lot of insert shots, Shafiq Mohammed Ali is keeping us interested in the investigation in the first half. The second half is the area where the editing is really maneuvering the highs of the movie, and I thought something was missing in the way the elevation was achieved. Even on a script level, you could see a few tracks being a mere distraction, like the family history of SI Santhosh.
There are a lot of factors, like the cinematography of Shyju Khalid, the music of Vishnu Vijay, and the performances of all the main actors, that make this movie watchable. And I loved how Sreeraj Sreenivasan used black humor in places we didn’t expect. If you look at the very final scene of the film, a different version of the signature Basil Joseph smile is used there, and that should have been a high moment that would make you clap for the scripting. Because of the flaws in the presentation of the big reveal, the movie misses out on a satisfying end punch.
Pravinkoodu Shappu is a thoroughly engaging film that sort of misses out on having that climactic high.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended