UNNAM

Saw UNNAM, the official Malayalam remake of the Hindi movie Jhonny Gaddar. Well, the movie is undoubtedly not up to the standard of Sreeram Raghavan’s Johnny Gaddar. The problem with UNNAM is that, UNNAM is not an exact thriller.

They have tried to make some small modifications from original Johnny Gaddar, but for me that spoiled the fun/thrill factor. Tried to add some emotional melodrama in each characters back drop to give it a conventional Malayalam movie feel.

For those who havent seen Johnny Gaddar, UNNAM is about a gang of people trying to make a big fortune through a drug deal. What follows is a series of incidents including murders, cheating etc. The five gang members are portrayed by Lal (Sunny), Aloshi (Asif Ali), Murugan (Nedumudi Venu ), Tony (Prashanth Narayanan) and Basheer. Sreenivasan as the COP Balakrishna. The female leads in the movie are Rima (Jennifer) and Swetha Menon.
Well in the on screen side, Lal is apt for the role which originally was portrayed by Dharmendra. Tony was also a fabulous casting. His north Indian Malayalam slang was really stylish. But for me the rest of the casting or I should say character structure wasn’t that convincing. Nedumudi Venu against Tony (comparing with GD) was a total miscasting. An emotional Aloshi (Asif) does not suit the story. He needs to be a dark man like Johnny. The emotional attachment Aloshi has with many of the characters in the movie makes many of his actions weird. Basheer also wasnt that convincing. Rima delivered an ordinary performance. I think she should learn to cry in a different manner at least for her next film. Swetha did her small role neatly.

In the technical side, direction of Sreeram Raghavan and Sibi Malayil is entirely different. The style factor is missing in UNNAM. Screenplay is fine. Very similar to the original. There are some added scenes like the opening sequence in the movie. Dialogues are cool. But some of them are just exact copy from Johnny Gaddar, like the MILEAGE dialog. Cinematography of Ajayan Vincent was convincing. Musiv was in sync with the feel of the movie, but difficult to enjoy.

Overall UNNAM is a good one time watch for those who havent seen Johnny Gaddar.
I am giving 2.5/5 for Sibi Malayil’s UNNAM and a special thumbs up for Prashanth Narayanan alias Tony.