Solomante Theneechakal squanders its potential to be an engaging thriller

Lal Jose’s Solomante Theneechakal (Malayalam), now streaming on Amazon Prime, is one of those purported thrillers that falls flat on its face due to clumsy execution, not to mention the over-saturated soundtrack and a propensity to run all the plot points on the fast track.

Severely lacking in self-control, the narration is disgracefully overdone, like a wedding where  every overdressed visitor decides to do an impromptu ramp walk.

There are seeds of an excellent thriller here. Sadly, it is all wasted in over-statement and dialogues that sound like politicians’ speeches at a roadside meeting where no one is really interested in what is being said.

The idea of two female cops sharing an apartment together had the potential to generate a productive heat. What is it like to be two women in a police station filled with sexist male cops? The two chick cops (Darshana Nair and Vincy Aloshious) do share their mutual amusement at the workplace atmosphere. But not enough. The dirty job beckons.

That cop-kinship could have been the crux of the plot. Too ambitious for its own good, the  film wants to be a murder mystery with one of the female cops Suja S (Darshana S Nair)  standing prime accused for the murder  of a male colleague Binu Alex (Addis Antony Akkara) who insists on showering unwanted attention on Suja. What transpires thereafter goes from the absurd to the cheesy back again to being uncontrollably absurd.

Midway, Joju George ‘s entry as a know-all cop doesn’t help inject credibility in a rapidly slipping narrative. It is tragic to see Joju, that fine naturalistic actor from Madhuram, Pada  and Aviyal, making a showy, filmy-heroic entry, loud music slo-mo strides and all, like a Salman Khan or a Mahesh Babu. This is not how it was meant to be. Not for Malayalam  cinema. So far, playing to the galleries was for cinema in other parts of India.

The ambience is sickeningly synthetic. The cop who gets killed is so duplicitous and slimy  and so bloody deserving to be dead, you wonder what the fuss is about. Sure enough, the murderer is finally not only let off the hook but almost given a hero’s send-off to wherever  murderers go after the deed is exposed.

This film goes straight to the doghouse. With so much talent involved, how could Solomante Theneechakal go so wrong? It seems the urge to deliver a massy thriller overtook the finer  values, rendering this the cheapest police procedural I’ve seen in the Malayalam language.

On the plus side, the two female cops are shown to share the household chores in a fair and square division of labour. I wish the film too had apportioned the labour of filmmaking departments more judiciously.

This film, about getting away with murder, is a miscarriage of justice on more levels than one.

At a traffic signal, a little girl tries to sell pictures of Mohanlal and Mammootty to Joju George.

“You don’t have Jayaram? Then I don’t want,” says Joju, and drives off.

A moment like this where a character actually says something that gives him a voice is rare in Solomante Theneechakal. Everyone speaks on auto-pilot in this rambling loud whodunit.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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