Category - Movie Review
Movie released on the 30th of June 2021.
Running time – 141 minutes.
Malayalam Language Motion Picture produced by Mr. Anto Joseph and
Directed by Tanu Balak
Released exclusively on Amazon Prime
Review written and edited by Dr. Anoop Prathapan
This review was written on the 1st of July 2021
"Cold case" is an intense investigation movie with an acceptable track of a logical police investigation knit with a needless, melodramatic, horror track that seemed boringly redundant. The protagonist is an ACP Sathyajith played by Prithviraj trying to uncover the who-what-whys behind an inexplicable crime. Parallelly an investigative journalist Medha played by Aditi Balan does the same after some untoward incidents in her newly rented out partially furnished house, especially in and around her refrigerator. How they parallelly run their investigations, meet each other just 25 minutes before the end of the movie and eventually hunt down the culprit together, forms the rest of the narrative.
Prithviraj puts in a sober, decent performance as Sathyajith and so does Aditi as Medha. To be honest there is nothing much in the script for a competent actor like Prithviraj to perform. Nevertheless, he has done his part with effortless ease showcasing his ever-attractive masculine charisma on screen.
The technical aspects as a whole deserve 70 marks out of 100 – the making is appropriate in some places and exaggerated in many others. The only song in the 141-minute runtime, composed by Prakash Alex is a forgettable fare. You won’t even remember the song or its tune or its lyrics as the movie ends. It was such a squandered effort. The background score was also annoying at times – made excessively loud to imbue the horror (component) in the viewers. The subtitles in many parts seemed like a thoughtless translation from Malayalam. Some of the scenes in the movie were quite redolent of Tanu Balak’s advertisement-movie background. His maiden directorial lacks the delights of a classic whodunnit.
The parapsychology – horror elements felt so unwanted in the story. The narrative could have been said as a normal police/journalist investigative story even better, sans the horror thread. The screenwriter Sreenath V. Nath, who also doubled up as the lyricist deserves a warning for this absurdity. The narration clearly leaves more people wanting to see more of the logical police investigation which Sathyajith confidently pursues. The character played by Suchitra Pillai viz., Zara Zaccai appeared quite ludicrous to me as if it were something that just popped out of a children’s cartoon fairy tale. The irony is that the makers expected all of these horror components to be so thrilling, but that reality fell far from that. So were certain scenes around that haunted refrigerator.
Late Mr. Anil Nedumangad has portrayed his part to perfection though his screen time was limited. The screenplay made him speak some very evident and unnecessary facts to other characters, just to maintain the momentum of the narration.
As a whole, it seemed to me like a good recipe that was spoiled by the addition of a few unnecessary ingredients without which it could have tasted muy muy bien. To compound the woes, let there not be a sequel, if that is what the makers thought of, in the closing scene.
These are the kind of movies which should show up only on Amazon Prime as you won’t need to lament your efforts of driving out to the theatres through the bustling city traffic, to watch it there.
My Rating 4.5/10
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