Abrahaminte Santhathikal

The kind of fun a movie like Abrahaminte Santhathikal provides is pretty much similar to what we felt while watching scriptwriter Haneef Adeni’s last work, The Great Father. For me, TGF was an over-stylized thriller that became watchable because of certain thriller elements which sort of made me forget the numerous moments that lacked conviction in it. Filled with excessive slow-motion and background music, Shaji Padoor’s directorial debut Abrahaminte Santhathikal gets saved by the climax that has an impressive twist.

Derrick Abraham is an impeccable police officer who has a great track record. We get to see his efficiency in the beginning when he solves a case by finding the serial killer. At one point Derrick had to go against his younger brother as he was convinced that his younger brother was involved in a murder. This causes a rift between the brothers and the movie shows us how that rift grows and how it ends.

The initial vibe of the movie wasn’t that promising, to be honest. We are shown a crime and we expect it to be the central conflict of the movie which our hero will solve. Then there is a typical stylized hero entry which is pretty much for the sake of fans pleasure. Interestingly the initial murder gets solved rapidly, taking the movie to a dramatic phase were we are seeing two brothers struggling in a particular situation. No matter whatever is the situation in the movie was, Shaji Padoor makes sure that everything is captured in slow motion. Even in the second half, the melodrama continues and the cat and mouse game in the movie isn’t that thrilling. The film gets a good push when we get to see certain unprecedented things happening in the character equations. I would compare the heroics in that with what we saw in Mammootty’s own Puthiya Niyamam. You might get Goosebumps when you go with the flow, but if you take a minute to think about how that was possible, you will get a lot of unanswered question.

Derrick Abraham is one more to the long list of characters that mostly used the looks of the great actor Mammootty. There are only a couple of scenes where we see the fragility of the character and sadly those portions are pretty small. Anson Paul as the younger brother Philip was a bit inconsistent. Kanika has a role with a back-story, but very less relevance. Two people who got fair enough roles were Renji Panicker and Kalabhavan Shajon. Yog Japee, Siddique, Suresh Krishna, Maqbool Salman and Sohanlal (a burden in the name of comedy) are the other main actors here.

This movie with that title and also the fact that Haneef Adeni is writing it has the burden of being that fan pleaser. And Shaji Padoor’s idea of achieving that is by glorifying the hero and also making him a sacrificing figure.  There is one scene where a little boy who gets rescued by Derrick sees him firing bullets and his reaction is “wow”. Every now and then you get to see this slow-motion stylized visuals from Alby backed by that trailer background score from Gopi Sunder. Like I already said, it’s in the last quarter where the whole plot takes a twist we get some sort of energy. But if you try to backtrack about the practical possibility of anything shown there, you will get disappointed. If Haneef Adeni says someone is a sharpshooter, he can shoot in the most insane ways. Alby’s frames have the style factor to help the movie. Mahesh Narayanan has tried to accommodate the slow motion in a less annoying way. There are way too many songs, especially in the first half. The background tracks are impressive as ringtones for our mobiles, but the usage in the film was a bit too much.

Abrahaminte Santhathikal is far better compared to a lot of recent box office debacles from the megastar. It’s the comparison with those films that makes Abrahaminte Santhathikal a better movie. For me, the movie ultimately gave the same feeling I had when I saw Haneef Adeni’s The Great Father.

Rating: 2.5/5

By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.

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