Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam

Recently I saw a post in social media about the movie Masters starring Prithviraj that it would have been a better film if it was directed by Jeethu Joseph. Well, after finishing the film Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam, I also had the feeling that this movie would have been a better thriller in the hands of someone like Jeethu Joseph. The content here had the ingredients required to make an engaging thriller, but Rejishh Midhila’s treatment was a bit short on intrigue.

The story here is set in a village. The priest in the church, Vincent Kombana is someone who had this ambition to be a police officer and he became a priest after fulfilling his wish to wear the Khaki. The priest has his methods of maintaining peace in the village, courtesy the police training he got. Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam shows us the difficult phase in the priest’s life when he faces an ambiguous situation in taking a decision.

The movie has too much of extra footages that sort of exposes the commercial compromises of the film. The whole Lal chapter and the police back-story doesn’t really need that much in-depth visualization as the story never really utilizes those points in the film. Even with those portions, the movie is only 123 minutes long. It is only at the end of the first half of the movie it approaches the central conflict and till that point, it has numerous disjoint subplots featuring various characters whom at a later stage of the film are a different kind of suspect. Rejishh Midhila as a filmmaker can’t really make those portions blended or exciting.

Amith Chakkalakkal who has appeared as supporting character in movies like Honey Bee, Kayamkulam Kochunni, Pretham 2 etc. is the hero of the film and his usual style of dialogue delivery suits the attitude of the priest character who is a mix of toughness and compassion. The script mostly focuses only on one dimension of this character and Amith was convincing in being that rowdy reverent. Dileesh Pothan in a recent interview has said that he isn’t a good actor and he is doing it only because of the remuneration. Well, I strongly disagree with him and in this movie too he has done a very impressive performance. Shammi Thilakan was fine in his full-length character. Lena has a very small yet important role. Sudhy Koppa, Anjali Nair, Nandu, Nedumudi Venu, Dheeraj Denny etc. are the other main actors here who don’t have much to perform.

This is Rejishh Midhila’s second film after 2014’s Lal Bahadur Shasthri. He is also the writer of this film. What was interesting about the film is its presentation of the conflict. A priest is placed in an extremely difficult scenario where he is helpless and clueless on how to make the next move. And the movie was supposed to be exciting in the second half when the hero makes smarter moves against the villain. The portions depicting that cat and mouse play was exactly the reason why I felt Jeethu Joseph would have made it more gripping. The presentation needed a slightly tidier and edgier outlook. The cinematography was really nice. Songs and BGM from Mejo Joseph were also pretty good.  

On an idea level, Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam had the scope to be a thriller. But the making here is a tad short on intrigue and there are a lot of buildups at the beginning that could have been avoided. Considering the small runtime of 123 minutes, Vaarikkuzhiyile Kolapathakam is a watchable thriller.

Rating: 2.5/5

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By Aswin Bharadwaj

Founder and editor of Lensmen Reviews.

View all of Aswin Bharadwaj's posts.