Twenty One Gms

If Twenty One Gms was released before Jeethu Joseph’s Memories, I would have called it an impressive attempt. But in the post-Memories space, Bibin Krishna’s thriller feels less surprising. The only thing that works in favor of this movie is the climax twist. But the film is so generic up to that point that it feels more like an unexpected ending rather than a mind-blowing twist. The climax’s shock-value helps the film end on an exciting note, but in totality, Twenty One Gms is a clunky script.

Crime Branch DYSP Nanda Kishore is in charge of this twin murder case. A young girl named Anjali was brutally murdered. After hearing the news, her brother Martin came from the US, and he also got murdered the next day. The police couldn’t really find convincing evidence to nab the culprit, and thus it was transferred to the crime branch. How Nanda Kishore solves the case with the help of police officer Sunny is what we see in Twenty One Gms.

Some movies will try to slow down the pace of their narrative or sound dramatic purposefully so that when the climax happens, and we backtrack the whole script, the treatment will look sensible. This is not the case with Twenty One Gms. This cliched notion of characters saying the first half of the dialogues in English and the other half in Malayalam with heavy drama is visible here too. You kind of know the characters they assume as culprits are not the ones, and the film just goes on and on teasing the viewer without necessarily exciting them.

Anoop Menon as DYSP Nanda Kishore feels more like Anoop Menon rather than the character. Bibin Krishna, on multiple occasions, gives him these slow-motion walks to establish him as the cool guy. Anu Mohan was fine in terms of expressions. Still, there is a stiffness to his dialogue delivery which was there in Lalitham Sundaram too. Ranjith, as Dr. John Samuel, was terrible with the dialogue delivery. Leona Leshoy gets a role with ample screen time, but the character rarely affects the story. Jeeva Joseph and Vivek Anirudh play important roles in the film. Manasa Radhakrishnan, Chandunath, Lena, Shankar Ramakrishnan, Aji John, Nandhu, etc., are there in the elaborate star cast.

As I said, if it had been released almost a decade ago, the tropes and presentation would have felt engaging. Twenty One Gms feels like an expired script in terms of how it is treated. The “4 Martin” hint, what the killer did to mislead the investigation, etc., are interesting on paper if treated in a way that looks unique. There is a sequence where Anoop Menon’s character loses his cool over an arrest, and the jarring tone shift never made any sense. After so many half-baked and familiar thriller tropes, Bibin Krishna introduces this twist at the end, which made me think that this would have been a passable thriller in the hands of a better director.

As I walked out, I heard someone say that it was better than Salute. If you are someone who prefers a very black and white thriller with a last-minute twist, I guess Twenty One Gms has the ability to make you forget about its lackluster beginning portions. If they had reworked the film’s treatment, Twenty One Gms wouldn’t have had to depend too much on a twist.

Crime Branch DYSP Nanda Kishore is in charge of this twin murder case. A young girl named Anjali was brutally murdered. After hearing the news, her brother Martin came from the US, he also got murdered. The police couldn’t really find convincing evidence to nab the culprit, and thus it was transferred to the crime branch. How Nanda Kishore solves the case with the help of police officer Sunny is what we see in Twenty One Gms.

Some movies will try to slow down the pace of their narrative or sound dramatic purposefully so that when the climax happens, and we backtrack the whole script, the treatment will look sensible. This is not the case with Twenty One Gms. This cliched notion of characters saying the first half of the dialogues in English and the other half in Malayalam with heavy drama is visible here too. You kind of know the characters they assume as culprits are not the ones, and the film just goes on and on teasing the viewer without necessarily exciting them.

Anoop Menon as DYSP Nanda Kishore feels more like Anoop Menon rather than the character. Bibin Krishna, on multiple occasions, gives him these slow-motion walks to establish him as the cool guy. Anu Mohan was fine in terms of expressions. Still, there is a stiffness to his dialogue delivery which was there in Lalitham Sundaram too. Ranjith, as Dr. John Samuel, was terrible with the dialogue delivery. Leona Leshoy gets a role with ample screen time, but the character rarely affects the story. Jeeva Joseph and Vivek Anirudh play important roles in the film. Manasa Radhakrishnan, Chandunath, Lena, Shankar Ramakrishnan, Aji John, Nandhu, etc., are there in the elaborate star cast.

As I said, if it had been released almost a decade ago, the tropes and presentation would have felt engaging. Twenty One Gms feels like an expired script in terms of how it is treated. The “4 Martin” hint, what the killer did to mislead the investigation, etc., are interesting on paper if treated in a way that looks unique. There is a sequence where Anoop Menon’s character loses his cool over an arrest, and the jarring tone shift never made any sense. After so many half-baked and familiar thriller tropes, Bibin Krishna introduces this twist at the end, which made me think that this would have been a passable thriller in the hands of a better director.

As I walked out, I heard someone say that it was better than Salute. If you are someone who prefers a very black and white thriller with a last-minute twist, I guess Twenty One Gms has the ability to make you forget about its lackluster beginning portions. If they had reworked the film’s treatment, Twenty One Gms wouldn’t have had to depend too much on a twist.