Rifle Club Review | A Mild Wild West Set In the Western Ghats

In the final moments of the movie Rifle Club, there are references to the Wild Wild West films that have Mexican stand-offs and stuff. The intention of Aashiq Abu and his writers is to create something of that texture against the backdrop of the hill stations of Kerala, where placing a similar wildness and lawlessness is very convincing. With a runtime of around 114 minutes, the movie is very much focused on what it wants to say, and a larger chunk of the screenplay is invested in building the club and its characters. While the pre-climax face-off between the two gangs is pretty slick and engaging, somewhere, I felt the finale needed a bit more refinement to have that wow factor.

As you can guess from the title, the film is about a rifle club in Wayanad. The story is set in 1991, and a Malayalam superstar named Shajahan, who predominantly works in romantic films, has come to the club in order to get some training in hunting. He has plans to do a hunting movie similar to Mrugaya. But the night he chose to spend there wasn’t really the best day as the club had uninvited visitors. Who are these visitors, and what they really want is what we see in Rifle Club.

The structuring of Rifle Club, to an extent even the location, has a similarity to Varathan on a script level. A major part of the movie is getting invested in showing us who these characters are, how they are to each other, and to what extent they can go. In the middle portions of the movie, you can see the script trying to draw parallels between the events happening in the Rifle Club and the actual hunting. The script neatly foreshadows many things that really elevate some portions of the final act of the movie. Just like Varathan, it is the counterattack that really sets the ball rolling. And the banter that happens between Dayanand and Avaran is hilarious, and in those patches, you get to see the Aashiq Abu we sort of missed post-COVID.

Dileesh Pothan, as Avaran, is pretty agile and confident. The body language and the dialogue delivery are on point, and you can sense the experience of that character in the way he has performed. Anurag Kashyap, as the antagonist, gets to be this crazy dad character. In most of his acting gigs, we have seen him do similar stuff, and this time, it was in better clothes. Vijayaraghavan, as the veteran of the club, was pretty good. Vishnu Agasthya plays a fairly extensive character in the movie, and he performed his part with ease. Sooraj, aka Hanumankind, as Bheera was fine in that eccentric character and it was actually a good casting choice. Vineeth Kumar plays the part of the film star, who transforms over the course of the incident. The rest of the cast has some big names like Suresh Krishna, Vani Vishwanath, Surabhi Lakshmi, Unnimaya Prasad, Darshana Rajendran, etc. Their screen times are relatively less, but they are all pretty memorable because of the character quirks.

Aashiq Abu, who has also done cinematography for this film, knows that surprise isn’t really the element that can make this movie work. World-building is really necessary for the final act to work, and for that, writers Syam Pushkaran, Dileesh Karunakaran, and Suhas use the first half. You get to see the rough dynamic between the members of the club. The things that Avaran tells Shajahan while he aims, which also come in the form of lyrics, are basically a description of the attitude of the club members. The cinematography opts for monochromatic sharp lights for a lot of sequences, which sort of sets a genre movie ambiance. Rex Vijayan’s tracks and background score really pump up some of the setpieces.

As I already said, Rifle Club is under two hours long, and it is not beating around the bush to get to the main deal. That aspect of the movie, along with a banter-filled set piece in the final act, really elevates the film. But in totality, I felt the ending should have been a better extension of the kind of action we saw till that point. On the bright side, for people who used to love Aashiq Abu films, this one gives reassurance that he still has it in him.