Anchakkallakokkan Review | A generic revenge story that tries too hard to save itself through violence

The last half hour of the movie Anchakkallakokkan (thank God I’m not reviewing the video) takes place inside a police station and there is a lot of violence. Ullas Chemban’s idea is perhaps to show the transformation of a character through an event that changes her life. But the problem is with the film’s writing, which is extremely generic when it comes to building certain characters and once one of the main characters undergoes that transformation, you won’t feel the cinematic excitement that Ullas and co-writer Vikil Venu could have imagined. .

The story takes place in 1986 because there is a reference to the Thankamani incident in the film. There has been a murder of a prominent man named Chaapra and with elections around the corner, there is a lot of pressure on the police to catch the people behind the murder. Just at that time, a new police constable named Vasudevan joined that station, and the inexperienced one had a really tough first few days, and the only man who showed any mercy to him was his eldest Nadavaramban. The events that unfold in that village after Chaapra’s murder are what we see in this film.

On paper, there are catchy ideas of creating multiple tracks for Vasudevan, Chaapra’s children, Padmini and Shankaran so that when it culminates, it feels like a showdown. But the lack of finesse in the writing is causing problems in the execution, as some tracks seem inconsequential, like Padmini’s, for example. Even when bloodshed occurs in the final act of the film, except for the entry of Chaapra’s children, everything else is extremely guessable, and it was as if we, as an audience, were waiting for it to happen. At some point I felt that if Vasudevan’s character had been played by a new face, there would have been an element of surprise in the final moments.

Chamban Vinod plays the role of the cool cop Nadavaramban and with his signature style, he fits the role. The transition that happens to the character seems quite subtle at the film’s climax and Chemban keeps it together. Lukman Avaran plays this character who is not comfortable with violence, and there is quite an extensive backstory explaining why that is. The character is also two-toned, and at some point I felt that the higher tones of both tones seemed too animated. Manikandan Achari plays a crucial role in the film along with Megha Thomas, Sreejith Ravi, Senthil Krishna, etc.

Ullas Chemban has used this technique of showing different angles of a particular event several times in the film, and that somewhere shows the fact that he knows how basic the concept is. There is no surprise factor in the story, and they are trying to add it predominantly through the staging of the scenes. But like I said, when they attempt this ambitious violent scene inside the police station in the climax, the effort may be genuine, but we can see where it’s going. Another major problem is that you won’t feel like rooting for any of the characters on an emotional level. The angle of Vasudevan’s childhood, the story of Shankaran’s daughter and what happened to Padmini’s husband are supposed to amplify the emotional tone when it all culminates in the climax, but the writing just couldn’t pull that off.

Anchakkallakokkan has tried to have this layered approach towards a very basic revenge story by infusing it with multiple characters with various stories. But none of these stories have that depth to connect with the audience on an emotional level, and thus the gore-fest at the end feels more like an effort to cover up the film’s shallow writing.